The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yesterday's lecture achieved this result, that at the end of all our various complicated considerations we were able to obtain an idea of how we are to picture matter, the thought picture we are to make of matter and substance. We found that we must conceive of matter as broken spiritual forms—pulverised spiritual forms. And as we went on to speak of how we, as human beings, are yoked to material existence, of how the broken and scattered spiritual form has penetrated into us men of earth and filled out our being, we found ourselves inevitably led to give further consideration to this most essential fact of all material existence, a fact that has been beautifully represented as the expulsion from Paradise. We had to consider, that is to say, the process by which man is penetrated with earth matter. You will have formed the idea from what was said yesterday—that is, if you followed what was said not merely with conceptions of thought, but entering a little into its deeper meaning—you will have formed the idea that man is in reality a kind of double being. Let me remind you of what we pointed out the day before yesterday when we showed how it was through the Luciferic influence that what we may call our sense perceptions were inserted into our being, it was through Luciferic influence that we as men of earth received our various sense perceptions. We indicated, you will remember, that these sense perceptions, which belong essentially to earth, were, as a matter of fact, not predetermined for man from the beginning, but instead a kind of intimate living together with the ruling Will; and that the hearing we have to-day with the ear, the seeing with the eye and the perceiving with the other organs of sense, are processes which are directly due to Luciferic influence. Then we were able to go on to show how a more inward process, namely, what appears in our body as the processes of gland secretion, has come about through a further disarrangement in the members of man's organisation, which we described. And, finally, the quite normal organic activity of nourishment and of the digestion of substance in the human body—this we referred back to a kind of preponderance of activity in the astral body over the activity in the etheric body, which preponderance was again due to Luciferic influence. Such was the result of our study the day before yesterday. We saw, that is, how the coarse material processes in man—nourishment and digestion, gland secretion, sense perception—are all, as they occur in man, to be attributed to the influence of Lucifer. Yesterday we found from another aspect that what we call nerve substance is again due to Luciferic influence, and similarly muscle substance and bone substance.

Let us consider a little further this double being in man. On the one hand we have seen that sense perception, glandular activity and the whole organic process of metabolism are due to Luciferic influence, and on the other hand that the very presence of nerves and of the human systems of muscle and bone are similarly due to the same Luciferic influence. What kind of relation is there between these two men—on the one hand the man of senses, glands and digestion, and on the other hand the man of nerves, muscle and bone? What cosmic task is set for these two, coupled closely together as they are in the nature of man? Now if you will think it over you will easily—even without any further occultism—come to the idea that all that is connected with the activity of senses and of gland, as well as all that is connected with the metabolic system, belongs to what is transitory and feeting. We need only look at it in a superficial way in order to see that when it has played itself out in man it passes away and is gone. It is something man leaves behind him. Let us make that fact quite clear and present to our minds. There is no lasting and eternal purpose to be fulfilled in the performance of these organic activities. You only need to look round a little and learn from what science and everyday life can teach in order to realise how terribly these processes enclose us in this life.

We are in this aspect mere apparatus for nourishment and digestion, etc.; it is like a wheel that goes round and round perpetually in the same way. Unless we are prepared to reckon it as a particular step forward in human nature when man develops, in the course of years, as he has occasion, a refined taste for this or that special food or drink, we shall be obliged to say that we can find extraordinarily little progressive evolution in this perpetual treadmill of eating and digestion. It repeats itself again and again in the same way, and that we as human beings, in so far as we have to carry out these activities, have thereby any special worth for eternity—well, I hardly think there is anyone who could even allow himself to dream such a thing. Gland secretion, too, has really fulfilled its task as soon as it has taken place. It has, of course, its significance for the life of the organism as a whole, but it has no eternal value. Nor has sense perception as such, for sense impression comes and goes. Think how pale and dim, after even a few days, is what you have received in the way of sense impressions, how entirely and radically different memory is from sense perception. You will, I think, be ready to admit that though sense perceptions are often very beautiful and bring delight to the life of man in their immediate experience and observation, they have nevertheless no value for eternity. That is quite certain. For what has become of the value of the sense impressions you received, perhaps as a little child or as an older boy or girl? All the sights and sounds which penetrate then into your eye or your ear—where are they now. How pale are our memories! When you contemplate this thought—that man, in so far as he is a man of senses, of glands and of digestion, has by virtue of these activities no worth for eternity—then you will easily be able to unite it with the thought we expressed yesterday in a general way and that we can, unfortunately, only indicate very slightly in this short course of lectures—the thought, namely, of scattering form, of form that is breaking and scattering and dispersing. When form sprays into these activities, when shattered form, that is to say matter, is driven into the organism it brings about sense activity, gland secretion and metabolic activity. Hence it is evident that in these activities we have to do with breaking form, with a form that breaks to pieces. It is nothing more than special manifestations of the destruction process in form that meets us in sense activity, gland secretion and the activity of digestion. They are particular processes of what we can describe in general as the destruction process in form, or as the shooting of form into matter.

When, however, we come to nerve activity, muscle activity and the strength and effective virtue of the bones in man, the case is altogether different. We were able to show yesterday that in the bony system we have Imagination that has become material, in the muscular system Inspiration that has become material and manifests in movement, and in the nervous system materialised Intuition. And now we have reached a point where we can go on from this and give a fuller description of a truth that can only be partially described in more general anthroposophical lectures. When man passes through the gate of death, gradually little by little through decay or combustion or however it may be, his bony system falls to pieces. But what remains when the bony system crumbles away in the material sense is the Imagination. The Imagination is not lost. It remains in those substances which we still have in us even when we have passed through the gate of death and enter Kamaloka or Devachan. We retain in us a picture form which the thoroughly experienced clairvoyant does not indeed find to be quite like the bony system of man; but when a less trained clairvoyant lets it work upon him he finds an outward similarity in the form to the bony system; and on this account is death, not without some justification, represented in the Imagination of the skeleton. The picture goes back to an untrained, but for all that, a not altogether mistaken clairvoyance.

And combined with this Imagination is what remains from the muscles, when they decay in the physical sense. From the muscles remains the Inspiration, of which they are in reality only the expression; for the muscles are Inspirations steeped, soaked in matter. The Inspiration remains for us when we have passed through the gate of death. That is a most interesting fact. And so to from the system of nerves, when the nerves themselves have undergone their process of decay, we have left after death the Intuition. All these are actual constituent parts of our astral as well as our etheric body.

You know that man does not lay aside his etheric body completely; an extract from the etheric body we take with us when we have passed through the gate of death. But this is not all. There is something else we have now to discover. Man carries his system of nerves continually through the world, and this system of nerves is nothing else than Intuition interspersed with matter. As man bears this system of nerves through the world it is really so that in the places where the nerves are situated in the human organism there is always Intuition, and this Intuition rays out a spirituality which man has perpetually around him like kind radiating aura. It is thus not only a question of what we take with us when we go through the gate of death; but we have also to consider the Intuition which we are sending out from us all the time, in proportion as the nerves decay. A process of decay is going on in you all the time, you need to be continually formed anew—even although in the case of the nerves there is a greater measure of durability that elsewhere. A constant steaming out takes place which can only be perceived by means of Intuition. So that we may say spiritual substance—a substance that is perceptible to Intuition—is perpetually raying out from man in proportion as his physical nerve system goes to pieces. So that you will see from this, inasmuch as man makes use of his physical system of nerves, inasmuch as he uses it up and brings it to destruction, he is not without significance for the world. He has, in fact, great significance. For it depends on the use man makes of his nerves, what kind of intuitively perceived substances stream Inspiration. And this outstreaming takes place in such a way that it is continually peopling the world with infinitely finely differentiated processes of movement. Inspired substances stream out from man into the world. (The words are not very happy but we have no others.) And from man's bones there streams out what we may call Imaginatively perceived substance. There you have the most extraordinarily interesting fact. Let me enlarge on it a little, not in order to overfeed you with results of clairvoyant research, but because it is really interesting.

Through this radiating from the bones as they decay man literally leaves behind him, everywhere he goes, pictures; that is to say, spirit pictures perceptible by means of Imagination. Fine shadow pictures of us remain behind wherever we have been. After you have gone out of this hall a finer and well-trained clairvoyance could still perceive on the chairs fine shadow pictures. They would be perceptible for a time until they were received into the general world process—delicate shadow pictures of each individual which have been rayed out from his bony system. These Imaginations are the cause of that unpleasant feeling one has sometimes when one comes into a room that has been lived in before by an uncongenial person. The feeling is due, in the main, to the Imaginations he has left behind. One still meets him there in a kind of shadow picture. And in this connection a sensitive person is not far behind the clairvoyant, for he has an uncomfortable feeling about what another person has left behind him in a room. The clairvoyant has only this advantage, that he can make visible to himself in an Imaginative picture what the other only feels more instinctively.

But now what happens to all that we let radiate out of us in this way? All that rays forth from us in this way, my dear friends—take it altogether and you have, in very deed and truth, the whole influence that is exerted by us on the world. For whatever you do, when you do it, you move, you bring your system of bones and muscles into movement. Not only so, but even when you only lie and think you are still raying forth from you substance that is perceptible to Intuition. In short, whatever activity you engage in you are sending out this spiritual substance into the world, it is perpetually passing over from you into the world. Now the fact is, if these processes were not taking place there would be nothing left of our earth when it came to the end of its evolution, nothing left of it but pulverised matter which would pass over like dust into universal space. But something is saved through man from the material process of the earth and lives in the general cosmos, in the universe; and it is what can arise through Inspiration, Intuition and Imagination. In this way man gives to the world that wherefrom the world builds itself up anew. Man, as it were, provides the building-stones. This it is that will continue to live as the soul and spirit of the whole earth when this earth's material substance is rent and shattered like a corpse; even as the individual soul and spirit nature of man lives on when man has passed through the gate of death. Man bears his individual soul through the gate of death; the earth bears over into the Jupiter-existence what has come of the Imaginations and Inspirations and Intuitions of man. There you have the great difference that exists between the two men in man. The man who perceives with his senses, who secretes in his glands, who digests and who nourishes himself—that is the man who is destined for what is cast off, he is of time and passes away. But that which is the result of the presence of nerves and muscle and bone—that is incorporated into the earth, in order that the earth may thereby continue to exist.

And now we come to something which stands like a great mystery in our whole existence, and which, because it is in very truth a mystery, cannot be grasped by the intellect; rather is it for the soul to believe it and penetrate to its depths. It is, none the less, perfectly true. That which man lets stream out from him into his environment divides itself quite distinctly into two parts. There is, firstly, that part of the Inspiration, Intuition and Imagination upon which general cosmic existence, so to say, depends, the cosmos receives it, and drinks it in. But there is another part which cosmic existence does not receive but, on the contrary, rejects. Cosmic existence makes its attitude quite clear, as much as to say: “These Inspirations and Intuitions and Imaginations I can use, I absorb them in order that I may carry them over to the Jupiter existence.” But others cosmic existence rejects, it refuses to receive them; and the result is these other Intuitions, Inspirations and Imaginations, being nowhere received, remain as such for themselves; they remain—spiritually—in the cosmos, they cannot be disintegrated. Thus, what we ray forth from us falls into two parts, that which is gladly received by the cosmos and that which the cosmos rejects. The cosmos is not pleased with the latter and leaves it alone. It remains where it is. How long does it remain? It remains there until such time as the human being comes and himself destroys it by means of outstreamings, which are of a kind able to destroy it; and as a general rule no other man has the power to destroy outstreamings that are rejected by the cosmos than the one who himself sent them out. Here you have something of the technique of karma, here you have the reason why we must ourselves meet again in the course of our karma all those Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions which have been rejected by the cosmos. For we must ourselves destroy them and annihilate them; the cosmos receives only what is correct and right in thought, what is beautiful in feeling and what is morally good and sound. Everything else it rejects. That is the secret, that is the great mystery. And whatever is false in thought, whatever is ugly in feeling and whatever is morally evil—a man must himself erase from existence if it is to be no longer there; and he must do so through the necessary thoughts and feelings or will impulses or deeds. It will follow him all the time until he has erased it. And so you see it is not true to say that the cosmos consists only of neutral laws of nature or expresses itself only in neutral laws of nature. The cosmos that is all around us—of which we believe we can perceive with our senses and grasp with our intellect, has quite other forces in it as well. If we may put it in this way, the cosmos vigorously repels and repudiates the evil, the ugly and the false and is eager to receive into itself the good, the beautiful and the true. It is not merely at stated times that the powers of the cosmos sit in judgment, but this sitting in judgment is something that goes on throughout the whole of earth evolution.

And now we can find an answer to the question: How does the evolution of man stand in relation to the higher spiritual Beings?

We have seen how on the one hand the man of senses, glands and digestion has come into being through Luciferic influence. And the other man, too, we can in a sense attribute to Luciferic influence. But whereas the first man is a man doomed to destruction, destined solely for time, it is the part of the other man to save human nature for eternity, for duration, to carry over something human into a future existence. The man of nerves and muscle and bone has the task of carrying over what man experiences on earth. And so you see in reality man fell down from his spiritual height when he became the first man—the man of senses, glands and digestion—and is gradually working his way up into spiritual existence through having received as a counterpoise the second man—the man of nerve, muscle and bone. But now the strange thing is that this excretion of Intuitive, Inspirational and Imaginative substance could not take place in any other way than through the material processes, being processes of destruction. If our nerves and muscles and bones were not perpetually decaying, if instead they were to remain as they are, then we should not be able to send out from us this spiritual substance. For it is only the destruction and decay in material existence that can give occasion for the spiritual to light up and burst into flame. And thus if our nerves and muscles and bones could not decay and finally be destroyed in death, then we should be condemned to be chained to this existence on the earth and not be able to partake in the further evolution that goes on into the future. The present would become hardened into stone for us, and there would be for us no evolution on into the future. Like two balancing forces—each holding the other in equipoise—are the forces that play in the one and in the other man within us.

And now, in between the two, as it were mediating between the two, we find a substance of which we have frequently spoken in our more general lectures but to which we have as yet made little allusion in this connection. Between the two stands the blood—which is in this connection also a “special fluid.” For as we have seen, all that we have learnt to know as nerve substance, etc., has only become so in those particular workings of force which were due to the action of the Luciferic influence. But in blood we have something which has directly undergone, as substance itself, the Luciferic influence. You will remember we saw how the manner in which physical body, etheric body and astral body work into one another would be different, had it not been for the Luciferic influence. But there we have to do in a certain respect with super-sensible things which only afterwards take up matter into themselves; which work upon matter with the Luciferic influence they had themselves first undergone, and make it what it is. The substance of nerve and muscle and bone owes its existence to the fact that certain bodies of man are irregularly put together. Upon the substances as such Lucifer has no influence; for these substances arise as the result of what he has done, they are there because he has displaced, disarranged, the bodies. Where Lucifer approached the human being he brought about a disarrangement as between the bodies. But upon the blood Lucifer works directly—upon the blood as matter, as substance. Blood is the one case—and therefore a “special fluid”—where in the material substance itself we have evidence that present-day man is not as he was really intended to be, is not as he would have been but for the Luciferic influence. For blood has become something quite different from what it should have been.

Again, you will say, a rather grotesque idea! But it is true. Recall what we said yesterday about the whole origin of matter. We said that matter arises when spiritual form comes to a kind of boundary or limit and there breaks and scatters; this pulverised form then shows itself as matter. That is the actual earthly matter. It really only occurs directly in this way in the mineral world, for the other substances are changed and modified through being taken hold of by other things that intervene. The substance of blood, however, as such, is a unique substance.

Blood substance was originally also destined to come first of all to a certain limit. Suppose you have here (a) purely spiritual form-rays of the blood substance, and here (b) its force is exhausted. Now according to the tendencies originally inherent in it, blood substance was not meant to be dispersed and sprayed into space, but here at the boundary (b) it was to become just very slightly material and then spray back into itself, spray directly back again into the spiritual. That is how the blood ought to have been. To put it rather crudely, blood ought only to have come so far as to form as it were a skin of substance, fine and slight, it ought only to have come to the point of beginning to be material. It should be forever shooting out of the spiritual for a moment, becoming matter just to the extent of being materially perceptible, then again shooting back into the spiritual and being received up again into it. A perpetual surging forth from the spiritual and shooting back into it again—that is what blood should have been. Its inherent tendencies are directed to this end. Blood was designed to be a perpetual flashing up of light in the material. It was really intended to be something entirely spiritual. And it would have been so if men had at the beginning of earth evolution received their ego from the Spirits of Form alone; for then they would experience their ego through the resistance created by the momentary lighting up in the blood. In the lighting up in the blood man would experience the “I am”; it would be the organ for his ego perception. That would, however, be the one and only sense perception which man would have had at all; the others would not be there if everything had happened without the Luciferic influence. Man would have lived in union together with the ruling Will. The single sense perception that was designed for man was this—in the flash of blood substance and in the immediate rush back into the spiritual, to perceive his ego. Instead of beholding colours and hearing tones and perceiving tastes man ought really to live within the ruling Will; he ought to be, as it were, swimming in it. What was designed for him was that from out of the spiritual World-All, into which he would be placed as a pure Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, he should gaze down upon a being on the earth or in the environs of the earth—not feeling to himself: “I am in that being,” but: “I gaze down there—it belongs to me—the spiritual blood becomes for one moment material, and in what flashes up to me I perceive my I.” The one and only sense perception which should have come is the perception of the I or ego, and the one and only substance which was intended for man in the material world is the blood in this form of momentary flashing up. So that if man had become like this, if he had remained the man of Paradise, he would look down from the World-All upon that which was destined to symbolise him on this earth and to give him the consciousness of I, namely, a purely spiritual being consisting of Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions, within which the I shoots up in the attempt to break through. And in this flash man would be able to say: “I am, for through me has come into being that which is of me down below.”

It is strange but it is a fact. Man was intended to live in the environment of the earth. Suppose a man were living here (a) in the environment of the earth, then it was intended he should him-self produce on the earth his reflection, and only through this reaction ray back again his ego, and then he would say: “There below is my sign.” It was not intended that man should carry round about with him his man of bones and his man of glands, etc.—still less that he should pronounce the grotesque verdict: “That is I.” It should have happened quite differently. Man should have lived in the environs of the earth planet, and sunk a sign and symbol into the earth in the flashing up of form in blood, and he should then have said to himself: “There I drive in my stake—my sign and my seal, which gives me the consciousness of my ego. For what I have become, in that I have passed through Saturn existence and through Sun and through Moon existence—with that I can hover here outside in the World-All. It is the ego I must now add; and the ego I perceive by inscribing myself in the earth below, so that I can always read in the flashing of the blood what I am.” We were, therefore, not originally intended to walk the earth in bodies of flesh and bone as we do, but to circle around the earth and make records, as it were, down below from which we might recognise and know that we are that—that we are an ego. Whoever overlooks this fact has no true knowledge of the nature of man.

Then came Lucifer and brought it about for man that he should have not merely his ego for sense perception, but that he should feel his astral body, too, as his ego, all that he had acquired on the Moon as astral body—thinking, feeling and willing. The ego was thus no longer pure, something else was mixed with it; and this led to the necessity for man to fall down into matter. The expulsion from Paradise is the fall into matter. And immediately there followed the change in man's blood. For now instead of flashing up for a moment and then being received back again into spirituality, the blood becomes real blood substance; it drives right through and spurts up as blood substance. It receives the tendency to be as we know it to-day. And so this blood substance, which by rights should return into the spiritual in the very moment when it becomes material, now gushes up into the rest of man and fills his whole organisation, undergoing modification in accordance with the various forces in man. According, for example, as it penetrates into a preponderance of physical over etheric body or of etheric body over astral body, and so on, the blood turns into nerve substance, muscle substance, etc. Thus Lucifer compels blood to a greater materiality. Whereas blood has been designed to shoot up and immediately disappear again, Lucifer brought it into a coarse materiality. That is the one direct deed that Lucifer has performed in matter itself. He made blood into matter, whereas with other things he at least only brought disorder among them. Were it not for Lucifer blood would not be as it is at all, it would instead exist in a spirituality which comes only to the edge of materiality, only to the status nascendi, and then at once returns. Blood as matter is the creation of Lucifer, and since man has in blood a physical expression of the ego, man's ego is bound up here on earth with a creation of Lucifer.

And since again Ahriman is only able to approach man because Lucifer is there before him, we can say: Blood is what Lucifer has thrown down for Ahriman to catch. So that both have now an approach to man. Can we wonder that an ancient primal feeling makes Lucifer-Ahriman look upon blood as his earthly property? Can we wonder that he has his contracts written in blood, or that he attaches great value to Faust's signing the contract with his blood? For blood belongs entirely to Lucifer. Everything else holds in it something divine; with nothing else is he quite at home, even ink is for Lucifer more divine than blood; blood is precisely his element.

We see, then, that man has these two beings in him, the man of senses, glands and digestion, and the man of nerve, muscle and bone. The corresponding forces of both are charged with a coarse materiality, and both are supplied with blood, in the form it has assumed through the action of the Luciferic influence. For it is quite obvious, is it not, even to external science, that man, in so far as he is a material being, is entirely a product of his blood. Everything in man that is material is nourished out of blood, it is really all transformed blood; from the point of view of matter, bones, nerves, muscles, glands are all of them nothing else than transformed blood. Man is actually blood, and as such he is a walking Lucifer-Ahriman. He carries Lucifer-Ahriman round with him all the time. It is by virtue of what is behind matter, and is poured into matter through the blood, that man belongs to the divine world and to a forward-moving evolution, not to an evolution that is a mere relic of the past. Lucifer—and Ahriman, too—came into our world through remaining behind at particular stages of evolution.

Bearing in mind all we have said, we can see quite clearly how at the very beginning of earth evolution men had something in common, something that united them. They had from the first in their blood something that was common to them all. For if the blood had remained as it was designed to be for man it would have been a pure emanation of the Spirits of Form. In the blood the Spirits of Form would live in us. These Spirits of Form are, as most of you know, my dear friends, none other than the seven Elohim of the Bible. Remember all that was said in the Munich cycle of lectures on Genesis (The Biblical Secrets of Creation), and you will see that if man had kept his blood in the state it originally was to have had, he would feel in him the seven Elohim; that is to say, he would feel his ego in him as seven-membered. One of its members would be the chief and would correspond to Jahve or Jehovah, and the other six would, to begin with, be subordinate for man. This seven-foldness that man would feel in his ego, as it were, a surging up within him of each of the seven Elohim or Spirits of Form, would have produced originally and spontaneously in him the sevenfold nature that we now have to acquire with so great toil and trouble. Because his blood has been tainted by Lucifer, therefore man has to wait so long; he has to wait until he has sent forth sufficient outstreamings of Intuitive and Inspired and Imaginative substance from nerves, muscles and bones for him to be ripe to receive once again this sevenfold nature into himself. As yet we have only come so far as to count up in an abstract manner as follows: the nature of man as it plays into the ego from physical body, and from etheric body, as it plays in from astral body, and from the very self of man—Jahve or Jehovah—and from Manas or Spirit Self; the nature of man as it plays in from Budhi or Life Spirit, and from Atma or Spirit Man. But man would never have been able to effect this specific darkening of the six other members and this outstanding illumination of the one, the ego, had not authority been given to Lucifer to interfere in the course of evolution. The real cause why at the beginning of earth evolution the other members suffered a darkening, while the ego grew particularly bright and was made to shine with a light-filled ego-ness—was that the ego was hurried into dense matter, so that it was able to come to a clear consciousness of its individuality, of its particular single individuality, whereas it would otherwise all along have felt its sevenfoldness.

Thus we see on the one hand that if man's blood had remained as it was he would have come to an ego that would from the outset have had a sevenfold character. Through Lucifer having been given him, man has come, however, to an ego that is single and unitary in character, he has come to feel and know his ego as the centre of his being. We can, therefore, understand how the blood in its originally intended form contains something that could work in a social direction, that could bring men together, so that they might feel themselves to be one common race of humanity. This would have been so if the seven Elohim had come to revelation in the human egos, as it was intended they should in the beginning. Lucifer's gift to man has meant that man feels himself as a particular individuality and cuts himself off in his self-dependence from the common race of mankind. The world process takes its course on earth in such a way that through the working of Lucifer man is inclined to become more and more independent, whilst through the working of the seven Elohim he is inclined more and more to feel himself a member and part of the whole of humanity.

What result this has on morality and on the whole life of man in his evolution—of this we will speak tomorrow.

These lectures will perhaps have given you some idea of what a complicated being man is and from how many sides we must consider him if we would come near to his real nature. I want now to point to one more fact of evolution, and it is one that may be classed among the most significant of all the results we can arrive at when, with the help of clairvoyant research, we study the whole course of man's evolution—looking back over the period from very ancient times until to-day, and looking forward to what shall come for the race of man in the future. I have, in the course of these lectures, drawn your attention to a perception that man can acquire when he educates his faculty for knowledge in the way we described; when, that is to say, his soul in its efforts after knowledge enters into the moods we characterised as wonder, reverence, wisdom-filled harmony with the events of the world, and lastly, devotion and surrender to the whole world process. You will remember I explained how if the soul enters upon these moods or conditions, man's faculty of knowledge can gradually rise to a perception of two converse processes that are everywhere around him. Man learns to distinguish in his environment between what is becoming and what is dying away. He says to himself at every turn: Here I have to do with a process of becoming, something that will reach perfection only in the future, and here again, on the other hand, I encounter a gradual dying away, a gradual disappearing. We perceive the things of the world as existing in a region where everything is either coming into being or passing away. And I pointed out in particular how the human larynx is really an organ of the future, how it is called to be in the future something entirely different from what it is to-day. To-day it merely communicates to the outer world by means of the spoken word our inner moods and conditions, whereas in the future it will communicate what we ourselves are in our entirety; that is to say, it will serve for the procreation of the whole human being. It will be the reproductive organ of the future. A time will come when the larynx will not merely help man to express by means of the word what is in his heart and mind, but man will use the larynx to place his own self before the world; that is to say, the propagation of man will be intimately connected with the organ of the larynx.

Now in this complicated microcosm, in this complicated “little world” which we call “man,” for every such organ that is only as yet a seed and will later on in the future attain a higher degree of perfection, there is another corresponding organ which is gradually dwindling, gradually dying away. And the corresponding organ for the larynx is the organ of hearing. In proportion as the hearing apparatus little by little disappears, in proportion as it grows ever less and less, will the larynx grow more and more perfect and become more and more important. We can only estimate the greatness of this fact when we look back, with the help of the Akashic Records, into a far distant past of mankind and then from what our research reveals are in a position to form some conception of what the ear was once like. Great new vistas are opened up for a knowledge of the nature of man when we trace back the human ear to its original form. For in its present state this hearing apparatus of ours is no more than a shadow of what it once was. To-day it hears only tones of the physical plane, or words that express themselves in tones on the physical plane. But that is only a last remnant of what used to flow into man through the hearing; for through this hearing apparatus once flowed into man the mighty movements of the whole universe. And as to-day we hear earthly music with our ear, so in ancient times did world music, the music of the spheres, flow into man. And as to-day we men clothe words in tones, so in times past did the divine Word of the Worlds clothe itself in the music of the spheres—that Word of the Worlds of which the Gospel of St. John tells, the Logos, the divine Word. Into what we may call man's hearing in the old sense of the word, there flowed from the spiritual world a heavenly music, the music of the spheres, just as now into our hearing flows the human word and the earthly music, and within the music of the spheres was what the divine Spirits spoke. And as to-day man compels the air into forms with his word and his singing and his tone, so did the divine words and the divine music bring forth forms.

And now let us consider that most wonderful of all the forms created by Divine music. We may approach it in the following way. When to-day you give utterance to a word or even only to a vowel, let us say the sound “A”—then through this sound the possibility arises of creating a form in the air. It was in like manner that form entered into the world out of the cosmic Word, and the most precious of all these forms is man himself; man himself was created in his original state by being spoken out of the divine Word. “The Gods spake!” As to-day the air comes into forms through the word of man, so did our world come into its form through the Word of the Gods. And man is the most excellent of these forms. The organ of hearing was, of course, then infinitely more complicated than it is now. It is to-day quite shrunk and shriveled. To-day it is an external organ, penetrating only a limited distance into the brain, but once it extended inwards over the whole human being. And everywhere throughout man's being moved the paths of sound which spoke man into the world, as the utterance of the Word of God. Thus was man created—spiritually—through the organ of hearing, and in the future, when he has ascended again, he will have an ear that is quite small and rudimentary. The meaning and purpose of the ear will have completely gone. The ear is in a descending evolution; to compensate for this, however, the larynx, which is to-day only like a seed, will have developed to greater and greater beauty and perfection. And in its perfection it will speak out what man can bring forth for the world as the reproduction of his being, even as the Gods have spoken Man into the world as Their creation. So is the world process in a sense reversed. When we consider the whole human being as he stands before us we have to see in him the product of a descending evolution, and when we take an organ like the ear we find it has already reached a densification of the bony matter in the small bones of the ear, it is, as it were, in the last stage of descending evolution. The sense as such is disappearing. Man, however, is developing on into the world of spirituality, and his ascending organs are the bridges that carry him over into spirituality. Such is the relationship between the world of the senses and the world of the spirit. The world of the senses makes itself known to us in descending organs, and the world of the spirit in ascending organs.

And it is the same everywhere. In the whole world as it presents itself to our view we can follow in some way this becoming and dying. And it is important that we should learn to apply the idea to the other things in the world. It will teach us a great deal. Thus in the mineral world, for example, we can also find something that is in an ascending evolution, something that is to-day only at the seed stage. It is quicksilver. Quicksilver is a metal that will undergo transformations in the future but transformations that will lead to greater perfection. Quicksilver as metal has not yet pulverised all the forces that every substance possesses in the spiritual before it becomes substance at all. Powers that belong essentially to the nature of quicksilver still remain in the spiritual, and these it will in the future be able to bring forth and place into the world. It will assume new forms. Thus quicksilver corresponds in the world of the minerals to the human larynx, and also in a sense to the organ that is attached to the larynx—the lung. Other metals—copper, for example—are in a kind of descending evolution. Copper will, in the future, show itself as a metal that has no more inner spiritual forces to place out into the world, and that is consequently more and more obliged merely to split up and crumble to cosmic dust.

I have here set before you a few examples of connections which will in future increasingly become an object of study. Men will study more and more the relationships between the processes of becoming and of passing away in the several kingdoms of nature, and will learn to find—not through experiments and tests but through an Imaginative knowledge—relationships between particular metal substances and particular organs in the human body. And as a result substances whose effects are already partially known from external experience will, through Imagination, be able to be known in all their healing power, in all their reproductive and restorative power over the human body. All kinds of relationships and connections will be discovered between the several things and beings of the world.

Thus, man will come to recognise that the virtues which lie in the seed of a plant are differently connected with man than the virtues contained in the root. All that we find in the root of a plant corresponds in a manner to the human brain and to the nervous system belonging to the brain. [see Summary] It goes so far that in actual fact the eating of what is to be found in plant roots has a certain correspondence with the processes that take place in the brain and nervous system. So that if a man wants his brain and nervous system to be influenced from the physical side in its task as physical instrument for the life of the spirit, he receives with his nourishment the forces that live in the roots of plants. In a sense we may say that he lets think in him what he thus receives in food, he lets it do spiritual work in him, whilst if he is less inclined to eat of the root nature of plants it will be rather he himself who uses his brain and nervous system. You will see from this that if a person consumes a quantity of root food he is liable to become dependent in respect of his experiences as soul and spirit; because something objective and external works through him, his brain and nervous system surrender their own independence. And so if he wants it to be more himself who works in him, then he must diminish his consumption of roots. I am not, my dear friends, giving suggestions for any particular diet, I am merely informing you about facts of nature. And I warn you expressly not to set out to follow what I have said without further knowledge. Not every person is so far advanced as to be able to dispense with receiving the power of thought from something outside himself; and it may very easily happen that a man who is not ripe to leave it to his own soul-life to provide him with the power of thinking and feeling—it can easily happen that if such a man avoids eating roots he will fall into a sleepy condition, because his soul and spirit are not yet strong enough to evolve in themselves out of the spiritual those forces which are otherwise evolved in man quite objectively, and independently of his soul and spirit. The question of diet is always an individual question and depends entirely upon the whole manner and condition of the development of the person in question.

Again, what lives in the leaves of plants has a similar connection with the lungs of man, with all that belongs to the system of the lungs. Here we may find an indication of how a balance can be created, for example, in a person whose breathing system, owing to inherited tendencies or to some other condition, works too powerfully. It would be well in such a case to recommend the person not to eat much of what comes from the leaves of plants. There may be another person whose breathing system requires strengthening, and then we shall do well to advise him to eat freely of such food as comes from leaves. These things have their close connection also with the healing forces that are in the world in the several kingdoms of nature, for those parts of the individual plants which have a definite relationship to man's organs contain forces of healing for those regions of man's organism. Thus, roots contain great forces of healing for the nervous system, and leaves for the lung system.

The flowers of plants contain many healing forces for the kidney system, and seeds in a particular way for the heart, but only when the heart sets itself too strongly in opposition to the circulation of the blood. If the heart yields too easily to the circulation, then it is rather to the forces that are in the fruits, i.e. in the ripened seeds, that we must turn. These are some of the indications that result when we take into consideration that the moment we pass from man to surrounding nature all that presents itself to our senses in the world of nature is actually only the surface.

• Roots—Brain.
• Leaves—Lungs.
• Flowers—Kidneys.
• Seeds—Heart.
• Fruits—Blood system.

In the plants, what belongs to the world of the senses is only on the surface. Behind what reveals itself to sight and taste and smell are the soul-and-spirit forces of the plant. But these soul-and-spirit forces are not present in such a way that we could speak of each single plant as ensouled, in the same way that each single human being is ensouled. That is not the case. Whoever were to imagine it would be giving himself up to the same delusion as a man who thought that a single hair or the tip of the ear, or, let us say, a nose or a tooth, were ensouled. The whole human being is ensouled in his totality, and we only learn to look into the soul nature of man when we pass from the parts to the whole. And we must do the same in the case of every living thing. We must take care to observe it spiritually and see whether it is a part or in some sense a whole. All the various plants of the earth are by no means a whole for themselves; they are parts, they are members of a whole. And as a matter of fact we are only speaking of a reality when we speak of that to which the several plants belong, as parts belong to a whole. In the case of man we can see at once to what his teeth, his ears, his fingers belong; physically they belong to the whole organism. In the case of the plants we do not see with the eye that to which the single plant belongs, we cannot perceive it with a physical organ at all, for the moment we reach the whole we come into the realm of the spirit. The truth about the soul nature of the plant world is that it has the plants for its individual organs. There are, as a matter of fact, for our whole earth only a few beings who are, so to say, collected together in the earth and have as their single parts the plants, just as man has the hairs on his body.

We can, if we wish, refer to these beings as the group souls of the plants. We can say, when we go beyond what our senses can behold of the plant, that we come to the group souls of the plants, which are related to the single plant as a whole to a part. Altogether there are seven group souls—plant souls—belonging to the earth, and having in a way the centre of their being in the centre of the earth. So that it is not enough to conceive of the earth as this physical ball, but we have to think of it as penetrated by seven spheres varying in size and all having in the earth's centre their own spiritual centre. And then these spiritual beings impel the plants out of the earth. The root grows towards the centre of the earth, because what it really wants is to reach the centre of the earth, and it is only prevented from pushing right through by all the rest of the earth matter which stands in its way. Every plant root strives to penetrate to the centre of the earth, where is the centre of the spiritual being to which the plant belongs.

You see how extraordinarily important is the principle we laid down—to go always to the whole in the case of every being or creature, to see first whether it is a part or a whole. There are scientists in our days who look upon the plants as ensouled, but they look upon the individual plant in this way. That is no cleverer than if we were to call a tooth a man; both stand at the same mental level. Many people are ready to think, when they hear views like this put forward, that they are quite theosophical, just because the plants are regarded as having soul; but really all such talk on the part of science has no value at all for the future, the books are so much waste paper. To look for individual souls in the separate plants is to say: I will extract a tooth from a human being and look in it for a human soul. The plant soul is not to be found in the single plant but has its most important point in the centre of the earth, whither the root tends, for the root is that force in the plant which strives ever towards the most spiritual part of plant existence.

When we are considering a theme such as this we shall find, my dear friends, that we come across statements made from the standpoint of the present-day view of nature which can bring us near to the gateway of truth, but only to the same degree as Mephistopheles can bring Faust into the realm of the Mothers—namely, just to the outermost door and no further. For as little as Mephistopheles can go down with Faust into the realm of the Mothers, so little can present-day natural science enter into the spiritual. But as in a certain sense Mephistopheles gives the key, so does natural science. Natural science gives the key, but it does not want to enter itself, even as Mephistopheles does not want to enter himself into the realm of the Mothers. It is true in a sense that natural science gives us clues which, if we have acquired the mode of knowledge described in these lectures, can often bring our knowledge to the gateway of truth.

Natural science to-day, following the impulse of Darwin, has drawn—from observation of the world of the senses alone—an important conclusion; natural science speaks of the principle of the so-called “struggle for existence.” Who is not ready to see this struggle for existence all around him as long as he takes cognizance only of what the external world of the senses affords? Why, we meet with it at every turn. Think of the innumerable eggs laid by the creatures of the sea, how many are destroyed and perish, and how few actually grow up and become new creatures. There you have, apparently, a fearful struggle for existence. One could well begin to lament over it if one listened only to the world of the senses, and say: of the millions and billions of eggs so many, so very many, go under in the struggle for existence and so few survive. But this is only one side of a thought, my dear friends. Take hold now of the same thought at another end! In order to bring your thinking on in a certain direction, let me ask you to grasp the same thought at another point. You can also lament in a similar way over the struggle for existence in another connection. You can cast your eyes over a field of corn where so-and-so many ears are standing, each holding so-and-so many grains of corn, and you can ask the question: How many of these grains of corn are lost in some way or other and never fulfil their true purpose; and how few of them are planted again in the earth that they may become new plants of the same kind as the old ones? We can thus look over a field of corn that is promising a rich and plenteous harvest and say to ourselves: How much of all that sprouting life will perish without having attained its goal! Only a very few grains will be buried in the earth for new plants of the same kind to arise. Here again we have an instance, only in a rather different sphere from that of the sea-creatures, where also only a very few come to fulfilment.

But now let me ask you what would become of the human beings, who must eat something, if every single grain of corn were buried again in the earth? Let us suppose that it were possible—theoretically we can suppose anything—for such an abundant growth to take place that every single grain of corn could come up again; but we must also think of what would happen to the beings who have to find their nourishment from corn. Here we come to a strange pass; a belief that might appear justified when we look at the world of the senses is shaken. When we look at a field of corn in respect of its own physical existence we might seem quite justified in concluding that every single grain should grow into a whole plant. And yet the standpoint is perhaps false. Perhaps in the whole connection of things in the world we are not thinking correctly when we ascribe to each single grain of corn this aim and object, namely to grow into a whole plant. Perhaps there is nothing to justify us in saying that the grains of corn which serve other beings for food have somehow failed in their cosmic aim. Perhaps there is nothing that compels us to say that the eggs of the creatures of the sea have failed in their aim when they have not grown into fishes. It is in reality no more than human prejudice to suppose that every single seed ought to become again the same being. For we can only measure the tasks of the individual beings when we turn our eyes to the whole. And all the eggs that perish by the million in the sea every year, and do not grow into fish, provide food for other beings who are only not yet accessible to man's vision. And in very truth those spiritual substances which struggle their way through to existence and become the countless eggs of the sea that are apparently lost—they do not lament that they have missed their goal; for their goal is to be nourishment for other beings, to be received up into the very being of these other beings. Man stands outside with his intellect and imagines that only that has meaning which strives towards the goal which he, through his senses, is bound to see as the ultimate goal. But if we look at nature without prejudice and with an open mind we shall see in every single stage of every single being a certain perfection and fulfilment, and such perfection does not rest only in that which the being will eventually become, but is contained already in what it is.

These are some of the thoughts, acquired in occultism, which must take root in your heart and minds. And if you now turn away from the external world and look into your own soul you will observe that you have there in your soul a rich store of thoughts. Thoughts are perpetually streaming into your soul, perpetually lighting up within it; and only a very few of these thoughts are clearly grasped, only a very few become a conscious part of the human soul. When you go for a walk in the town, reflect how much enters your soul by way of your senses, and yet how little you observe in such a way that it becomes a permanent part of your soul-life. You are continually receiving impressions, and the sum of all the impressions you receive is related to the portion of them which becomes a permanent conscious possession of your soul as the great mass of fish spawn in the sea that is brought into being year by year is related to the proportion of it that actually grows into fish. You, as well, have to be forever going through this same process in your own soul, the process of bringing, over a vast region, only a very small quantity to fulfilment. And when man begins to lift the veil a little and gain some vision of the great flood of pictures of fantasy and of thought out of which he emerges when he emerges from sleep—the dream affords for many persons a last trace of the immeasurably rich life man leads in sleep—then he can come to realise that there is meaning in the fact that he receives so many impressions that do not come to clear consciousness. For the impressions that actually come to clear consciousness are lost to the inner work of man, they cannot work upon the system of the sense organs, nor the system of the glandular organs, nor the system of digestion, neither can they work upon the systems of nerves, muscles and bones. That which becomes conscious in the soul, and which present-day man carries in him as his conscious inner soul-content, has no more power to work upon the organism; its characteristic is that it is torn loose from the mother earth of the whole human being and thus comes into his consciousness. All the rest of the soul-content—which bears the same relation to these conscious thoughts and ideas as the many eggs do to the few that become fish—all the countless impressions that come into our soul from without and do not come into consciousness, work upon the whole human being.

Everything in his environment works continually upon man in his totality. The dream can sometimes teach you how far what lives on in your soul as conscious idea, how very far that is from being all that enters your soul; many other impressions are entering your soul all the time. You have only to give attention to such things and you will find they occur constantly in life. You dream of some situation. Perhaps you dream you are standing opposite a man who is talking with another man. You are standing there and making a third. In your dream you have a clear and exact picture of the countenance of the man opposite you. You say to yourself: “How do I come to have such a dream? It gives the impression of being concerned with people I know in physical life, it seems to relate itself to physical life. But where does it come from? I have never heard or seen this person.” And now you pursue it further; and when you examine carefully you find that a few days ago you were opposite this person in a railway carriage, only the whole experience passed by you without your consciousness being awakened. In spite of that, however, it entered deeply into your life. It is only owing to inexactitude of observation that people as a rule know nothing about these things.

The conceptions that dreams bring before us in this way are by no means the most important of the impressions that work upon the soul. The most important are quite other impressions. Think for a moment, my dear friends, how the process I described to you yesterday has been continually happening all the time in the evolution of humanity. By means of his bony system man has been continually producing Imaginations, by means of his muscular system he has been sending into the world Inspirations, and by means of his nervous system Intuitions. All these are now there in the world. The outstreamings that are evil, each man must himself receive back again and carry away through his destiny. But the rest builds up and takes form and is perpetually there in man's environment. In very deed all the Imaginations and Inspirations and Intuitions that man has given out into the earth world, even only since the Atlantean catastrophe, are present and are part of our environment. The good things man has given out—these the individual men do not need to take back again in the course of their Karma; but what they have sent out into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth all through the centuries of the successive epochs is actually present for the men who are now living on earth, just as much as the air is present for physical man. As man breathes physical air, as the air from his environment enters right inside him, so do the Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions that have been developed penetrate into man, and man partakes of them with his soul and spirit. And now it is important that man should develop a real relation to all this in his environment, that he should not meet what he has himself imparted to the earth in earlier epochs of its existence as if it were strange to him, as if he were unconnected with it. He can, however, only become connected with this spiritual content he has given to the earth when he gradually acquires the power to receive it into his soul.

How can this come about? When we come to make a deep study of the spiritual meaning of earth evolution we discover that in the time when post-Atlantean man had still something left of ancient clairvoyance, Imaginations, Inspirations and Intuitions were communicated in great abundance to the spiritual atmosphere of the earth. That was a time when spiritual substance was given forth in large measure. Since the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and especially from the present day onwards, we gradually send out less and less; what falls rather to us is to receive the old substance, for it is something with which we are intimately connected; we have the task to take up again into ourselves what has been sent out. That means it is required of man to replace an earlier spiritual outbreathing by a spiritual inbreathing. Man must grow ever more sensitive and receptive to the spiritual that is in the world. In ancient times that was not so necessary, for men of those olden times were able to put forth from them spiritual substance, they had, so to speak, a reserve store. But this reserve of spiritual substance has been so deeply drawn upon since the fourth post-Atlantean epoch that in future man will, in a sense, only be able to send out what he has first absorbed, what he has first inbreathed. In order that man may be able to take his place with full understanding in this new task in earth existence—to this end is Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science there in the world. When a man feels drawn to Anthroposophy it is not just that it takes his fancy as one among many other things in the world that take his fancy. He is drawn to Anthroposophy because it is intimately and deeply bound up with the whole of earth evolution, intimately bound up with the task that lies immediately before man to-day in evolution, namely to develop understanding for the spiritual all around him. For from the present time onwards it will be the case that those who do not develop understanding for the spirit behind the senses, for the world of the spirit behind the world of the senses, will be like men whose breathing system is so injured that they cannot take in air and they suffer from difficulty in breathing. To-day we still have left in our ideas a certain inheritance from primeval human wisdom, and we feed upon these old ideas. If, however, we are able to observe the evolution of mankind in modern times with the eye of the spirit we shall perceive that while discoveries abound in the field of the material and external, in the spiritual a kind of exhaustion shows itself, a strange poverty of spiritual content. New ideas, new concepts, arise less and less among mankind. It is only those who do not know of ancient concepts and who are always rediscovering the old for themselves—that is to say, their whole life long remain in a sense immature—who can imagine that it is possible for ideas to develop and mature in these days. No, the world of abstract ideas, the world of intellectual ideas is exhausted. There are no more new ideas springing up. The time of Thales marks the rise of intellectual ideas for Western thought. And now we stand at a kind of end; and philosophy as such, philosophy as a science of ideas, is at an end. Ideas and thoughts belong only to the physical plane, and man must learn to lift himself up to what lies beyond ideas and thought, that is, beyond the world of the physical plane. To begin with he will lift himself up to Imaginations. Imaginations will again become for him something real and actual. That will bring about a new fructification of the spiritual in mankind. That is why, my dear friends, Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science gives Imaginations of great and mighty world processes. Note how different from everything else of its kind is the description given of Saturn, Sun and Moon. Compare it with the abstract concepts of natural science. Everything in Spiritual Science has to be given in pictures, it has to be presented in such a way that it is not directly realisable in the external world of the senses. We say of Old Saturn that it had a condition of warmth, of warmth alone. That is sheer nonsense for the present-day world of the senses; for the world of the senses knows nothing of warmth substance as such. But what is nonsense for the world of the senses is truth for the world of the spirit, and the next step required of man in the near future is to live his way into the world of the spirit. Those who will not resolve to breathe the air of the spirit—and Spiritual Science has come into the world to make the soul of man susceptible to the air of the spirit—those who do not want to make themselves responsive to Spiritual Science will actually approach a condition of spiritual shortness of breath and spiritual exhaustion. One can already see many persons approaching this condition, and it leads on to a spiritual wasting and decline, to an actual “consumption” of the spirit.

Such would be the lot of men on earth if they wanted to stop short at the world of the senses. They would go into a spiritual decline. In the future development of civilisation there will be men full of sensitiveness for the spiritual, full of heart for all that Spiritual Science will give, and for the world of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition as it springs up spontaneously in the souls of men. So will it be for a part of humanity: they will have understanding and devotion for this world of the spirit. And it will be these men who will fulfil the task that is set before the earth in the near future. Others perhaps will be content with the world of the senses, not wanting to go beyond it, not wanting to go beyond that shadow picture which the conceptions of philosophy and of natural science afford. Such people are moving in the direction of spiritual shortness of breath, spiritual consumption, spiritual sickness and disease. They will become dried up in earth existence and not attain the goal that has been set for earth evolution. Evolution goes on, however, in such a way that each one is compelled to ask himself the question: Which way will you choose? In the future men will stand, as it were, on two paths, to the right and to the left. On one path will be those for whom the world of the senses alone is true, and on the other will be those for whom the world of the spiritual is the truth.

And since the senses, such as the ear, for example, will disappear, since at the end of the earth all the senses that belong to the earth will have completely disappeared, we can form some idea of what that consumption and wasting away will be like. If we abandon ourselves to the world of the senses we abandon ourselves to something which abandons man in the future of earth evolution. If we press through to the world of the spirit we develop ourselves in the direction of something that wills to come nearer and nearer to man in the future of earth evolution. If we want to express it in a symbol we may say that it is possible for man to stand there at the end of the earth evolution and to speak as Faust did when he had been blinded physically—(for man will be not only blinded to the world around him but deaf to it in addition, he will stand there blind and deaf and deprived of taste and smell)—he will be able to say with Faust: “But in my inmost spirit all is light—yes, and all is glorious ringing tones and words of men!” Thus will the man be able to speak who has turned to the world of the spirit. But the other, the man who wanted to remain at the world of the senses would be like a Faust who, after he was blinded, would be compelled to say: “Blind hast thou become without, and within shines no light of the spirit, darkness alone receives thee.”

Man has to choose between these two Faust natures in his relation to the future of the earth. For the first Faust would be one who had turned to the world of the spirit, whilst the second would be one who had turned to the world of the senses and had thereby become closely united with something of which man must feel that it is unsubstantial and unreal, and moreover that it robs him of his own reality and being. Thus does that appear which we set out to discover and bring from occult heights—thus does it appear, my dear friends, in its relation to the immediate daily life of man. I think I need not spend words in pointing out what moral principles and will impulses for present-day humanity can proceed from a real understanding of occult science.¹ For out of a rightly understood wisdom will a rightly understood goodness and virtue be born in the human heart. Let us strive after a real understanding of world evolution, let us seek after wisdom—and we shall find without fail that the child of wisdom will be love.

• 1. Printed by C. F. Hodgson & Son, Ltd., 2 Newton St., London, W.C.2.

People who have made some study of Anthroposophy, and particularly of the basic principles of reincarnation, karma and other truths connected with man and his evolution, may well ask: Why is it so difficult to gain a true, first-hand conception of that being in man which passes through repeated earth-lives—that being, which, if one could only acquire more intimate knowledge of it, would inevitably lead to an insight into the secrets of repeated earth-lives and even of karma? It is certainly true to say that as a rule man misinterprets everything connected with this question. At first he tries, as is only too natural, to explain it through his ordinary world of thought, through the ordinary intellect, and he asks himself: To what extent can we find, in the facts of life, proof that the conception of repeated earth-lives and karma is true? This endeavour, which is essentially of the nature of reflection, can, admittedly, lead man to a certain point, but no further. For our world of thought, as at present constituted, is entirely dependent on those qualities of our human organism which are limited to one incarnation; we possess them because, as men living between birth and death, we have been given this particular organism. And on this particular formation of the physical body, with the etheric body which is only one stage higher, everything that we can call our thought-world is dependent. The more penetrating these thoughts are, the better able they are to enter into abstract truths—so much the more are they dependent on the outer organism that is limited to one incarnation.

From this we may conclude that when we pass into the life between death and a new birth—that is to say, into the spiritual life—we can least of all take with us what we experience in our souls—our thoughts! And our most penetrating thoughts are what we have most of all to leave behind.

It may be asked: What is it that man more particularly discards when he passes through the Gate of Death? First of all, his physical body; and of all that constitutes his inner being he discards practically to the same extent all the abstract thoughts formulated in his soul. These two things—physical body, abstract thoughts, scientific thoughts as well—are what he can least of all take with him when he passes through the Gate of Death. It is in a certain sense easy for man to take with him his temperament, his impulses, his desires, as they have been formed in him, and especially his habits; he also takes with him the mode and nature of his impulses of will—but his thoughts least of all. Therefore, because our thoughts are so intimately bound up with the outer organism, we may conclude that they are instruments not very well adapted to penetrate the secrets of reincarnation and karma, which are truths extending beyond the single incarnation.

All the same, man can reach a certain point, and indeed he must develop his thinking up to a certain point, if he wishes to gain insight into the theory of reincarnation and karma. What can be said on this subject has practically all been said either in the pamphlet, Reincarnation and Karma from the standpoint of modern Natural Science, or in the chapter on reincarnation and karma in the book Theosophy. Scarcely anything can be added to what is said in these two publications. The question of what can be contributed by the intellect will not further concern us to-day, but rather the question of how man can acquire a certain conception of reincarnation and karma; that is to say, a conception of more value than a mere theoretical conviction, able to bring about a kind of inner certainty that the real soul-spiritual kernel of being within us comes over from earlier lives and passes on into later lives.

Such a definite conception can be acquired by means of certain inner exercises which are by no means easy; indeed they are difficult, but they can nevertheless be carried out. The first step is in some degree to practise the normal kind of self-cognition, which consists in looking back over one's life and asking oneself: What kind of person have I been? Have I been a person with a strong inclination for reflection, for inner contemplation; or am I one who has always had more love for the sensations of the outer world, liking or disliking this or that in everyday life? Was I a child who at school liked reading but not arithmetic, one who liked to hit other children but did not like being hit? Or was I a child always bound to be bullied and not smart enough to bully others?

It is well to look back on one's life in this way, and especially to ask oneself: Was I cut out for activities of the mind or of the will? What did I find easy or difficult? What happened to me that I would like to have avoided? What happenings made me say to myself: “I am glad this has come to pass ”—and so on.

It is good to look back on one's life in a certain way, and above all to envisage clearly those things that one did not like. All this leads to a more intimate knowledge of the inner kernel of our being. For example, a son who would have liked to become a poet was destined by his father to be a craftsman, and a craftsman he became, although he would sooner have been a poet. It is well to know clearly what we really wanted to be, and what we have become against our will, to visualise what would have suited us in the time of our youth but was not our lot, and then, again, what we would have liked to avoid.

All that I am saying refers, of course, to life in the past, not in the future—that would be a false conception. We must therefore be quite clear as to what such a retrospect into the past means; it tells us what we did not want, what we would have liked to avoid. When we have made that clear to ourselves, we really have a picture of those things in our life which have pleased us least. That is the essential point. And we must now try to live into a very remarkable conception: we must desire and will everything that we have not desired or willed. We must imagine to ourselves: What should I actually have become if I had ardently desired everything that in fact I did not wish for and which really went against the grain in life? In a certain sense we must here rule out what we have succeeded in overcoming, for the most important thing is that we should ardently wish or picture ourselves wishing for the things we have not desired, or concerning which we have not been able to carry out our wishes, so that we create for ourselves, in feeling and thought, a being hitherto unfamiliar to us. We must picture ourselves as this being with great intensity. If we can do this, if we can identify ourselves with the being we have ourselves built up in this way, we have made some real progress towards becoming acquainted with the inner soul-kernel of our being; for in the picture we have thus been able to make of our own personality there will arise something that we have not been in this present incarnation but which we have introduced into it. Our deeper being will emerge from the picture built up in this way.

You will see, therefore, that from those who wish to gain knowledge of this inner kernel of being, something is required for which people in our age have no inclination at all. They are not disposed to desire anything of the sort, for nowadays, if they reflect upon their own nature, they want to find themselves absolutely satisfied with it as it is. When we go back to earlier, more deeply religious epochs, we find there a feeling that man should feel himself overwhelmed because he so little resembled his Divine Archetype. This was not, of course, the idea of which we have spoken to-day, but it was an idea which led man away from what usually satisfies him, to something else, to that being which lives on beyond the organism existing between birth and death, even if it did not lead to the conviction of another incarnation. If you call up the counterpart of yourself, the following thought will dawn upon you. This counterpart—difficult as it may be to realise it as a picture of yourself in this life—is nevertheless connected with you, and you cannot disown it. Once it appears, it will follow you, hover before your soul and crystallise in such a way that you will realise that it has something to do with you, but certainly not with your present life. And then there develops the perception that this picture is derived from an earlier life.

If we bring this clearly before our souls, we shall soon realise how erroneous are most of the current conceptions of reincarnation and karma. You have no doubt often heard anthroposophists say when they meet a good arithmetician: “In his previous incarnation this man was a good arithmetician!” Unfortunately, many undeveloped anthroposophists string together links of reincarnation in such a way that it is thought possible to find the earlier incarnation because the present gifts must have existed in the preceding incarnation or in many previous incarnations. This is the worst possible form of speculation and anything derived from it is usually false. True observation by means of Spiritual Science, discloses, as a rule, the exact opposite. For example, people who in a former incarnation were good arithmeticians, good mathematicians, often reappear with no gift for mathematics at all. If we wish to discover what gifts we may probably have possessed in a former incarnation (here I must remind you that we are speaking of probabilities!)—if we wish to know what intellectual or artistic faculties, say, we possessed in a former incarnation, it is well to reflect upon those things for which we have least talent in the present life.

These are true indications, but they are very often interwoven with other facts. It may happen that a man had a special talent for mathematics in a former incarnation but died young, so that this talent never came to full expression; then he will be born again in his next incarnation with a talent for mathematics and this will represent a continuation of the previous incarnation. Abel, the mathematician who died young, will certainly in his next incarnation be reborn with a strong mathematical talent. [¹ But when a mathematician has lived to a great age, so that his talent has spent itself—then in his next incarnation he will be stupid as regards mathematics. I knew a man who had so little gift for mathematics that as a schoolboy he simply hated figures, and although in other subjects he did well, he generally managed to get through his classes only because he obtained exceptionally good marks in other subjects. This was because in his former incarnation he had been an exceedingly good mathematician.

If we go more deeply into this, the fact becomes apparent that the external career of a man in one incarnation, when it is not merely a career but also an inner vocation, passes over in his next incarnation into the inward shaping of his bodily organs. Thus, if a man has been an exceptionally good mathematician in one incarnation, the mastery he has obtained over numbers and figures remains with him and goes into a special development of his sense-organs, for instance, of the eyes. People with very good sight have it as a result of the fact that in their former incarnation they thought in forms; they took this thinking in forms with them and during the life between death and rebirth they worked specially on the shaping of their eyes. Here the mathematical talent has passed into the eyes and no longer exists as a gift for mathematics.

Another case known to occultists is where an individuality in one incarnation lived with intensity in architectural forms; these experiences lived as forces in his inner soul-life and worked strongly upon the instrument of hearing, so that in his next incarnation he became a great musician. He did not appear as a great architect, because the perception of form necessary for architecture was transformed into an organ-building force, so that there was nothing left but a supreme sensitiveness for music.

An external consideration of similarities is generally deceptive in reference to the characteristics of successive incarnations; and just as we must reflect upon whatever did not please us and conceive of ourselves as having had an intense desire for it, so we must also reflect upon those things for which we have the least talent, and about which we are stupid. If we discover the dullest sides of our nature, they may very probably point to those fields in which we were most brilliant in our previous incarnation. Thus we see how easy it is in these matters to begin at the wrong end. A little reflection will show us that it is the soul-kernel of our being which works over from one incarnation to another; this can be illustrated by the fact that it is no easier for a man to learn a language even if in his preceding incarnation he lived in the country associated with this particular language; otherwise our school-boys would not find it so difficult to learn Greek and Latin, for many of them in former incarnations will have lived in the regions where these were the languages of ordinary intercourse.

You see, the outer capacities we acquire are so closely connected with earthly circumstances that we cannot speak of them reappearing in the same form in the next incarnation; they are transformed into forces and in that way pass over to a subsequent incarnation. For instance, people who have a special faculty for learning languages in one incarnation will not have this in the next; instead, they will have the faculty which enables them to form more unbiassed judgments than those who had less talent for languages; these latter will tend to form one-sided judgments.

These matters are connected with the mysteries of reincarnation, and when we penetrate them we obtain a clear and vivid idea of what truly belongs to the inner being of man and what must in a certain sense be accounted external. For instance, language to-day is no longer part of man's inner being. We may love a language for the sake of what it expresses, for the sake of its Folk-Spirit; but it is something which passes over in transformed forms of force from one incarnation to another.

If a man follows up these ideas, so that he says: “I will strongly desire and will to be what I have become against my will, and also that for which I have the least capacity”—he can know that the conceptions he thus obtains will build up the picture of his preceding incarnation. This picture will arise in great precision if he is earnest and serious about the things just described. He will observe that from the whole way in which the conceptions coalesce, he will either feel: “This picture is quite near to me”; or he will feel: “This picture is a long, long way off.”

If through the elaboration of these conceptions, such a picture of the previous incarnation arises before a man's soul, he will, as a rule, he able to estimate how faded the picture is. The following feeling will come as an experience: “I am standing here; but the picture before me could not be my father, my grandfather, or my great-grandfather.” If however the student allows the picture to work upon him, his feeling and perception will lead him to the opinion: “Others are standing between me and this picture.” Let us for a moment assume that the student has the following feeling. It becomes apparent to him that between him and the picture stand twelve persons; another may perhaps feel that between him and the picture stand seven persons; but in any event the feeling is there and is of the greatest significance. If, for instance, there are twelve persons between oneself and the picture, this number can be divided by three, and the result will be four, and this may represent the number of centuries that have elapsed since the last incarnation. Thus a man who felt that there were twelve people standing between him and the picture, would say: “My preceding incarnation took place four centuries ago.”—This is given merely as an example; it will only actually be so in a very few cases, but it conveys the idea. Most people will find that they can in this way rightly estimate when they were incarnated before. Only the preparatory steps, of course, are rather difficult.

Here we have touched upon matters which are as alien as they can possibly be from present-day consciousness, and it cannot be denied that if we spoke of these things to people unprepared for them, they would regard them as so much irresponsible fantasy. The anthroposophical world-picture is fated—more so than any of its predecessors—to oppose traditional, accepted ideas. For to a very great extent these are imbued with the crudest, the most desolate materialism; and those very world-pictures which appear to be most firmly established on a scientific basis have, in point of fact, grown out of the most devastating materialistic assumptions. And since Anthroposophy is condemned to be labelled as the outlook cultivated by the kind of person who wants to know about his previous incarnations, one can readily understand that people of the present day are very far from taking anthroposophical views seriously. They are as far remote from the inclination to desire and to will what they have never desired or willed, as their habits of thought are remote from spiritual truths. The question might here be asked: Why, then, does spiritual truth come into the world just now? Why does it not leave humanity time to develop, to mature?

The reason is that it is almost impossible to imagine a greater difference between two successive epochs than there will be between the present epoch and that into which humanity will have grown when the people now living are reborn in their next incarnation. The development of certain spiritual faculties does not depend upon man, but upon the whole purpose and meaning, the whole nature, of earth-evolution. Men of the present day could not be more remote than they are from any belief in reincarnation and karma. This does not apply to students of Anthroposophy, but they are still very few; neither does it apply to those who still adhere to certain old forms of religion; but it applies to those who are the bearers of external cultural life: it sets them far away from belief in reincarnation and karma. Now the fact that people of the present day are particularly disinclined to believe in reincarnation and karma is connected in a remarkable way with their pursuits and studies—that is, in so far as these concern their intellectual faculties—and this fact will produce the opposite effect in the future. In the next incarnation these people, whether their pursuits are spiritual or material, will have a strong predisposition to gain an impression of their previous incarnation. Quite irrespective of their pursuits in this age, they will be reborn with a strong predisposition, a strong yearning for their last incarnation, with a strong desire to experience and know something of it. We are standing at a turning-point in time; it will lead men from an incarnation in which they have no desire at all to know anything of reincarnation and karma, to one in which the most living feeling will be this: “The whole of the life I now lead has no foundation for me if I cannot know anything of my former incarnation.” And the very people who now inveigh most bitterly against reincarnation and karma will writhe under the torment of the next life because they cannot explain to themselves how their life has come to be what it is.

Anthroposophy is not here for the purpose of cultivating in man a retrospective longing for former lives, but in order that there should be understanding of what will arise in connection with collective humanity when the people who are alive to-day will be here again. People who are anthroposophists to-day will share with those who are not the desire to remember, but they will have understanding, and therefore an inner harmony in their soul-life. Those who reject Anthroposophy to-day will wish to know something of it in the next life; they will really feel something like an inner torment concerning their previous incarnation but they will understand nothing of what it is that most distresses and torments them; they will be perplexed and will lack inner harmony. In their next incarnation they will have to be told: “You will understand the cause of this torment only if you can conceive that you have actually willed it into existence.”—Naturally, nobody will desire this torment, but people who are materialists to-day will in their next incarnation begin to understand their inner demands and the advice of those who will be in a position to know and who may say to them: “Conceive to yourselves that you have willed into existence this life from which you would like to flee.” If they begin to follow this advice and reflect: “How can I have willed this life?” they will say to themselves: “Yes, I did perhaps live in an incarnation where I said that it was absurdity and nonsense to speak of a following incarnation, and that this life was complete in itself, sending no forces on into a later one. And because at that time I felt a future life to be unreal, to be nonsense, my life now is so empty and desolate. It was I who actually implanted within myself the thought that is now the force making my life so meaningless and barren.”

That will be a right thought. Karmically it will outlive materialism. The next incarnation will be full of meaning for those who have acquired the conviction that their life, as it now is, is not only complete in itself but contains causes for the next. Meaningless and desolate will be the life of those who, because they believe reincarnation to be nonsense, have themselves rendered their own lives barren and void.

So we see that the thoughts we cherish do not pass over into the next life in a somewhat intensified form, but arise there transformed into forces. In the spiritual world, thoughts such as we now form between birth and death have no significance except in so far as they are transformed. If, for instance, a man has a great thought, however great it may be, the thought as thought is gone when he passes through the gate of death, but the enthusiasm, the perception and the feeling called to life by the thought—these pass through the gate of death with him. Man does not even take with him the thoughts of Anthroposophy, but what he has experienced through them—even to the details, not the general fundamental feeling alone—that is taken with him. This in particular is the point to grasp: thoughts as such are of real significance for the physical plane, but when we are speaking of the activity of thoughts in the higher worlds we must at the same time speak of their transformation in conformity with those worlds. Thoughts which deny reincarnation are transformed in the next life into an inner unreality, an inner emptiness of life; this inner unreality and emptiness are experienced as torment, as disharmony.

With the aid of a simile we may obtain an idea of this by thinking of something we like very much, and are always glad to see in a certain place—for instance, a particular flower blooming in a certain spot. If the flower is cut by a ruthless hand, we experience a certain pain. So it is with the whole organism of man. What causes man to feel pain? When the etheric and astral elements of an organ are embedded in a particular position in the physical body, then if the organ is injured so that the etheric and astral bodies cannot permeate it properly, pain is the result. It is just like the ruthless cutting of a rose from its accustomed place in a garden. When an organ has been injured, the etheric and astral bodies do not find what they seek, and this is then felt as bodily pain. And so a man's own thoughts, working on into the future, will meet him in the future. If he sends over into the next incarnation no forces of faith or of knowledge, his thoughts will fail him, and when he seeks for them he will find nothing. This lack will be experienced as pain and torment.

These are matters which from one aspect make the karmic course of certain events clear to us. They must be made clear, for our aim is to penetrate still more deeply into the ways and means whereby a man can make yet further preparation for coming to know the real kernel of his being of spirit-and-soul.

• 1. The Norwegian Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829), of whom Hermite said: “He has left mathematicians something to keep them busy for five hundred years.” Two days after Abel's death in poverty, from tuberculosis, a letter came saying that he was to be appointed Professor of Mathematics in the University of Berlin.

The thoughts contained in the last lecture will in that form have seemed to many incomprehensible, perhaps even matters of doubt; but if we go further into the subject to-day they will become clearer.

What was it that was presented to us in the last lecture? For the whole being of man it was somewhat similar to what a man accomplishes when he is in some position in life where he has to reflect upon earlier occurrences and experiences, and call them back into his memory. Memory and remembrance are experiences of the human soul which, in ordinary consciousness, are really connected only with the course of the soul's life between birth and death—or more exactly, with the period of time which begins in the later years of childhood and lasts until death.

We know that in ordinary consciousness our memory goes back only to a definite point of time in our childhood, and we have to be told about earlier events by our parents, elder relations or friends. When we consider this stretch of time, we speak of it in relation to the soul-life as “remembered.” It is not, of course, possible here to go more deeply into the meaning of the words “power of remembering”or “memory,” nor is it necessary for our purpose. We need only bring clearly before our souls that everything designated by these words is bound up with reflecting on past events or experiences. What we spoke of in the last lecture is akin to this reflecting, but it must not be equated with ordinary memory; it should be regarded rather as a higher, wider power of memory which leads us beyond this present incarnation to a sense of certainty that we have had previous earth-lives.

If we picture a man who needs to recall something he learnt at an early period of his life, and attunes his soul to bring out of the depths what he then learnt in order to follow it through in the present—if we form a living conception of this process of recollection, we see in it a function which belongs to our ordinary faculty of remembrance. In the last lecture we were speaking of functions of the soul, but those functions ought to lead to something that arises in our inner being in relation to our earlier earth-life, similar to that which arises in our souls in this life when we feel a past experience springing up in memory. Therefore you must not regard what was said in the last lecture as though this were all that is needed to lead us to an earlier earth-life, nor as though it were able immediately to evoke a right conception of the kind of people we were in an earlier incarnation. It is only an aid, just as self-recollection is an aid, helping us to draw forth what has disappeared into the background of the soul's life. Let us briefly sum up what we have grasped concerning such a recollection in reference to a former earth-life. This can best be done in the following way:

A little self-knowledge will render many of life's happenings comprehensible to us. If something disagreeable happens and we do not fully see the reason for it, we may say to ourselves: “I really am a careless person, and it is no wonder this happened to me.” This shows at least some understanding of what has happened. There are, however, countless experiences in life of which we simply cannot conceive that they are connected with the forces and faculties of our soul. In ordinary life we usually speak of them as accidental. We speak of accidents when we do not perceive how the things that befall us as strokes of fate are connected with the inner leanings of our soul, and so forth. In the last lecture attention was drawn also to events of another kind—experiences through which in a sense we extricate ourselves, by means of what we generally call our Ego, from some situation we are in. For example: a man may be destined by his parents or near relations to a certain calling or position in life, and he feels he must at all costs leave it and do something else. When in later life we look back on something like this, we say to ourselves: “We were put into a certain position in life, but by our own impulse of will, by our personal sympathy or antipathy, we have extricated ourselves from it.”

The point is not to pay attention to all manner of things, but to confine ourselves in our retrospective memory to something that vitally affected our life. If, for instance, a man has never felt any desire, nor had any motive to become a sailor, a will-impulse such as was referred to in the last lecture does not come into consideration at all, but only one whereby he actually brought about a change of fate, a reversal of some situation in life. But when in later life we remember something of this kind and realise that we extricated ourselves, we should not cultivate any rueful feelings about it, as though we ought to have stayed where we were. The essential point is not the practical outcome of the decision, but the recollection of when such turning points occurred. Then with regard to events of which we say, “This happened by chance,” or “We were in such and such a position but have extricated ourselves from it,” we must evoke with utmost energy the following inner experience.

We say to ourselves: “I will imagine that the position from which I extricated myself was one in which I deliberately placed myself with the strongest impulse of will.” We bring before our own souls the very thing that was repugnant to us and from which we extricated ourselves. We do this in such a way that we say: “As an experiment I will give myself up to the idea that I willed this with all my might; I will bring before my soul the picture of a man who willed something like this with all his might.”

And let us imagine that we ourselves brought about the events called “accidents.” Suppose it has come back to our memory that at some place a stone fell from a building on to our shoulders and hurt us badly. Then let us imagine that we had climbed on to the roof and placed the stone so that it was bound to fall, and that then we ran quickly under it so that it had to fall on us. It is of no consequence that such ideas are grotesque; the point is what we want to acquire through them.

Let us now put ourselves right into the soul of a man of whom we have built up such a picture, a man who has actually willed everything that has happened to us “by accident,” who has desired everything from which we have extricated ourselves. There will be no result in the soul if we practise such an exercise two or three or four times only, but a great deal will result if we practise it in connection with the innumerable experiences which we shall find if we look for them. If we do this over and over again, forming a living conception of a man who has willed everything that we have not willed we shall find that the picture never leaves us again, that it makes a very remarkable impression on us, as though it really had something to do with us. If we then acquire a certain delicate perception in this kind of self-probation, we shall soon discover how such a mood and such a picture, built up by ourselves, resemble an image we have called up from memory. The difference is only this, that when we call up such an image from memory in the ordinary way, it generally remains simply an image, but when we practise the exercises of which we have been speaking, what comes to life in the soul has in it an element of feeling, an element connected more with the moods of the soul, and less with images. We feel a particular relationship to this picture. The picture itself is not of much account, but the feelings we have make an impression similar to that made by memory-images. If we repeat this process over and over again, we arrive through an inner clarification at the ‘knowledge,’ one might say, that the picture we have built up is becoming clearer and clearer, just as a memory-image does when one starts to recall it out of dark depths of the soul.

Thus it is not a question of what we imagine, for this changes and becomes something different. It goes through a process similar to that which occurs when we want to remember a particular name and it nearly comes and then goes; we have a partial recollection of it and then say, for instance, Nuszbaumer, yet we have a feeling that this is not quite right, and then, without our being able to say why, the right name comes to us—Nuszdorfer, perhaps. Just as here the names Nüszbaumer, Nüszdorfer, build each other up, so the picture rights itself and changes. This is what causes the feeling to arise: “Here I have attained something which exists within me, and by the way it exists within me and is related to the rest of my soul-life, it plainly shows me that it cannot have existed within me in this form in my present incarnation!” So we perceive with the greatest inner clarity that what exists within us in this form, lies further back. Only we must realise that we are here dealing with a kind of faculty of remembrance which can be developed in the human soul, a faculty which, in contradistinction to the ordinary faculty of remembrance, must be designated by a different name. We must designate the ordinary faculty of remembrance as “image-memory,” but the faculty of remembrance now in question must really be described as a kind of “feeling and experience memory.” That this has a certain foundation can be proved by the following reflections.

We must bear in mind that our ordinary faculty of remembrance is really a kind of image-memory. Think how a specially painful event that perhaps happened to you twenty years ago, reappears in memory. The event may come up before you in all its details, but the pain which you suffered is no longer felt to the same extent; it is in a sense blotted out of the memory-image. There are, of course different degrees, and it may well happen that something has struck a man such a blow that again and again a fresh and more intense sorrow is felt when he remembers the experience. The general principle, however, holds good: so far as our present incarnation is concerned our faculty of remembrance is an image-memory, whereas the feelings that were experienced, or the will-impulses themselves, do not arise again in the soul with anything like the same intensity.

We need only take a characteristic example and we shall see how great the difference is between the image that arises in the memory, and what has remained of feelings and will-impulses. Let us think of a man who writes his Memoirs. Suppose, for example, that Bismarck, in writing his Memoirs, has come to the point when he prepared for the German-Austrian War of 1866, and imagine what may have taken place in his soul at that highly critical point, when he led and guided events against a host of condemnations and will-impulses. Do not conceive how all this lived in his soul at that time, but imagine that all he then experienced under the immediate impression of the events, sank down into the depths of his soul; then imagine how faded the feelings and will-impulses must have become by the time he wrote his Memoirs compared with what they were when he was actually carrying out the project. Nobody can fail to realise what a difference there is between the memory-image and the original feelings and will-impulses involved.

Those who have gone a little way into Anthroposophy will understand what has often been said: that our conceptual activity—including the conceptual activity related to memory—is something which, when roused by the external world in which we live in our physical bodies, has meaning only for this single incarnation. The fundamental principles of Anthroposophy have always taught us the great truth that all the concepts and ideas we make our own when we perceive anything through the senses, when we fear or hope for anything in life—(this does not relate to impulses of the soul, but to concepts)—all that makes up our conceptual life disappears very soon after we have passed through the Gate of Death. For concepts belong to the things that pass away with physical life, to the things that are least enduring. Anyone, however, who has given any study to the laws of reincarnation and karma can readily understand that our concepts, as we acquire them in the life that flows on in relation to the outer world or to the things of the physical plane, come to expression in speech, and that we can therefore in a sense connect the conceptual life with speech. Now everyone knows that he has to learn to speak some particular language in a given incarnation; for while it is obvious that many modern schoolboys incarnated in ancient Greece, none of them find it easier to learn Greek by being able to remember how they spoke Greek in a previous incarnation! Speech is entirely an expression of our conceptual life, and their fates are similar; so that concepts drawn from the physical world, and even the concepts we must acquire about the higher worlds, are in a sense always coloured by subjective pictures of the external world. Only when we have insight do we realise what concepts are able to tell about the higher worlds. What we learn directly from concepts is also in a sense, bound up with life between birth and death. After death we do not form concepts as we form them here; after death we see them, they are objects of perception; they exist just as colours and tones exist in the physical world. In the physical world what we picture to ourselves by means of conceptions carries an impress of physical matter, but in the disembodied state we have concepts before us in the same way as here we have colours and tones. A man cannot, of course, see red or blue as he sees them here with his physical eyes, but what he does not see here, and about which he forms concepts, is the same for him after death as red, green or any other colour or sound is here. What we learn to know in the physical world purely through concepts, or rather ideas (in the sense of Philosophy of Spiritual Activity) can be seen only through the veil of the conceptual life, but in the disembodied state it stands there in the way that the physical world stands before our consciousness. In the physical world there are people who really think that sense-impressions yield everything. That which man can make clear to himself by means of a concept—as for instance the concept ‘lamb’ or wolf—embraces everything the senses give us; but that which transcends matter can actually be denied by those who admit the existence of the sense-impression only. A man can make a mental picture of all he sees as lamb or wolf. Now the ordinary outlook tries to suggest that what can here be built up in a conceptual sense, is nothing more than a “mere idea.” But if we were to shut up a wolf and for a long time feed him on nothing else but lamb, so that he is filled with nothing but lamb-substance—nobody could possibly persuade himself that the ‘wolf’ has thereby become ‘lamb.’ Therefore we must say: obviously, here, what transcends a sense-impression is a concept. Certainly, there is no denying that what bodes forth the concept, dies; but what lives in ‘wolf,’ what lives in ‘lamb’—what is within them and cannot be seen by the physical eyes—this is ‘seen,’ perceived, in the life between death and rebirth.

Thus when it is said that conceptions are bound up with the physical body, we must not infer that man will be without conceptions, or rather without the content of the conceptions in the life between death and rebirth. Only that which has worked out the conceptions, disappears. Our conceptual life, as we experience it here in the physical world, has significance only for the life of this incarnation. In this connection I have already mentioned the case of Friedrich Hebbel, who once sketched out in his diary an ingenious plan for a drama. He had the idea of the reincarnated Plato in a school class, making the worst possible impression on the teacher and being severely reprimanded because he could not understand Plato! Here, too, is a suggestion that Plato's thought-structure—all that lived in him as thought—does not survive in the same form in his next incarnation.

In order to obtain a reasonable view of these things, we must consider the soul-life of man from a certain point of view. We must ask ourselves: What do we carry about as the content of our soul-life? First, we have our concepts. The fact that these concepts, permeated with feeling, can lead to impulses of will, does not prevent us from speaking of a specific life of concepts in the soul. For although there are people who can hardly confine themselves to a pure concept but immediately they conceive anything flare up in sympathy or antipathy, thus passing over into other impulses, this does not mean that the life of concepts cannot be separated from other contents of the soul.

Secondly, we have in our soul-life experiences of feeling. These appear in a great diversity of forms. There are the well-known antitheses in the life of feeling which can be spoken of as the sympathy and the antipathy we feel for things, or, if we want to describe them more emphatically, as love and hate. We can say that these feelings produce a kind of stimulus, and again there are feelings which bring about a certain tension and release. They cannot be classed with sympathy and antipathy. For a soul-impulse which can be described as a tension, a stimulus, or as a release, is different from what comes to expression in mere sympathy or antipathy. We should have to talk for a long time if it were a question of describing all the different kinds of feelings. To these also belong what may be described as the sense for beauty and for ugliness, which is a specific soul-content and does not resemble feelings of sympathy and antipathy. At all events it cannot be classed with them. We could also describe the specific feelings we have for good or evil. This is not the time to enlarge upon the difference between our inner experiences regarding a good or evil action, and the feelings of sympathy or antipathy for such actions—our love of a good action and hatred of an evil one. Thus we meet with feelings in the most diverse forms and we can distinguish them from our concepts.

A third kind of soul-experiences are the impulses of will, the life of will. This again must not be classed with what may be called experiences of feeling, which can or must remain enclosed within our soul-life, according to the way in which we experience them. An impulse of will says: " You shall do this, you shall do that." For we must distinguish between the mere feeling we have of what seems good or evil to ourselves or to others, and what arises in the soul as more than a feeling, when we are impelled to do good and to refrain from evil. Judgment can remain rooted in feeling but the impulses of will are a different matter. Although there are transitions between the life of feeling and the impulses of will, we ought not on the basis of ordinary observation to class them together without further consideration. In human life there are transitions everywhere. Just as there are people who never arrive at pure conceptions but always express simultaneously their love or hatred, who are thrown hither and thither because they cannot separate their feelings from their conceptions, so there are others who, when they see something, cannot refrain from going on, through an impulse of will, to an action, even if the action is unjustifiable. This leads to no good. It takes the form of kleptomania and so forth. Here there is no ordered relationship between the feelings and the impulses of the will, although in reality a sharp distinction should be drawn between them.

Thus in our life of soul we live in ideas, in feelings and in impulses of will. We have seen that the life of ideas is connected with a single incarnation between birth and death; we have seen how we enter life and build up our own life of ideas. This is not the case with the life of feeling, or with the life of will. Of those who insist that it is, one can only think that they can never have observed intelligently the development of a child. Consider a child in relation to the life of ideas before it can speak; it relates itself to the surrounding world through its conceptions or ideas. But it has very decided sympathies and antipathies, and active impulses of will for or against something. The decisiveness of these early will-impulses has actually misled a philosopher—Schopenhauer—into the belief that a man's character cannot be altered at all during life. This is not correct; the character can be altered. We must realise that when we enter physical life the position as regards the feelings and the impulses of will is in no way the same as it is regarding the life of concepts, for we enter an incarnation with a very definite equipment of feeling experiences and impulses of will. Correct observation might indeed make us surmise that in the feelings and will-impulses we have something that we have brought with us from earlier incarnations. And all this must be brought together as a ‘feeling-memory’ in contradistinction to the ‘concept-memory’ which belongs to one life only. We can arrive at no practical result if we take into account only a concept-memory. All that we develop in the life of concepts cannot call forth an impression which, if rightly understood, says to us: You have within you something which entered this incarnation with you at birth. For this we must go beyond the life of concepts; recollection must become something different, and we have shown what recollection can indeed become. How do we practise self-recollection? We do not merely picture to ourselves: “This was accidental in our life, such and such a thing befell us, there we were in a position of life which we abandoned,” and so forth. We must not stop at the concepts; we must make them living, active, as if there stood before us the picture of a personality who had desired and willed all this. We must experience ourselves in this willing. This is a very different experience from that of merely recalling concepts; it is an experience of living oneself into other soul-forces, if I may put it in that way.

This practice of drawing on will and desire in order to fill the soul with a certain content—a practice that has always been known and cultivated in all occult schools—is confirmed by what we know from anthroposophical or similar knowledge of the life of thinking, feeling and willing, and can be understood and explained thereby. Let us be quite clear that in giving a specific content to the life of feeling and will we must develop something which resembles memory-concepts, but does not stop there. It is something which enables us to develop another kind of memory—one that gradually leads us beyond the life enclosed in one incarnation between birth and death.

It must be strongly emphasised that the path here indicated is absolutely good and sure—but full of renunciation. It is easier to imagine on all sorts of external grounds that one has been Marie Antoinette or Mary Magdalene, or somebody like that in a former incarnation. It is more difficult by the methods described to construct out of what actually exists in the soul a picture of what one really was. For this reason we have to renounce a good deal, for we can readily be deceived. If someone says: “But we may be simply imagining it all,” then we must answer: “Yes, and it is also quite possible to imagine something in relation to our memories that never existed.” All these things are no real objections. Life itself can provide a criterion for distinguishing real imagination from fancy.

Somebody once said to me in a town in South Germany that everything in my book Occult Science might be based on simple suggestion. He said suggestion could be so vivid that one could even imagine lemonade so strongly that the taste of it would be in the mouth; and if such a thing is possible, why should it not be possible for what is present in Occult Science to be based on suggestions—Theoretically such an objection may be raised, but life brings the reflection that if anyone wishes to show by the example of lemonade how strongly suggestion can work, we must add that he has not understood how to carry the idea to its logical conclusion. He ought to try not only to imagine lemonade, but to quench his thirst with purely imaginary lemonade! Then he would see that it cannot be done. It is always necessary to carry our experiences to their conclusion, and this cannot be done theoretically but only by direct experience. With the same certainty by which we know that what arises from our memory-concepts is something we have experienced, so do the impulses of will we have called forth with regard to the accidents and undesired happenings arise from the depths of the soul as a picture of earlier experiences. We cannot disprove the statement of anyone who says: “That may be imagination,” any more than we can disprove theoretically what numerous people imagine they have experienced and quite certainly have not, nor prove to them what it is they really experienced. No theoretical proof is possible in either case.

We have shown in this way how earlier experience shines into present experiences, and how through careful soul-development we really can create for ourselves the conviction—not only a theoretical conviction but a practical conviction—that our soul reincarnates; we come to know that it has existed before. There are, however, experiences of a very different kind in our lives—experiences of which, when we recall them in memory, we must say: “In the form in which they appear, they do not explain an earlier life to us.” To-day I shall give an example of only one kind of such experiences, although the same thing may happen in a hundred, in a thousand, different ways.

A man may be walking in a wood, and being lost in thought may forget that the woodland path ends within a few steps at a precipice. Absorbed in his problem, he walks on at such a pace that in two or three steps more it will be impossible for him to stop, and he will fall over to his death. But just as he is on the verge, he hears a voice say, “Stop!” The voice makes such an impression upon him that he stops as though nailed to the spot. He thinks there must be someone who has saved him. He realises that his life would have been at an end if he had not been pulled up in this way. He looks round—and sees nobody.

The materialistic thinker will say that owing to some circumstance or other an auditory hallucination had come from the depths of the man's soul, and it was a happy chance that he was saved in this way. But there may be other ways of looking at the event; that at least should be admitted. I only mention this to-day, for these ‘other ways’ can only be told, not proved. We may say: ”Processes in the spiritual world have brought it about that at the moment when you reached your karmic crisis, your life was bestowed on you as a gift. If things had gone further without this occurrence, your life would have been at an end; it is now as though a gift to you, and you owe this new life to the Powers who stand behind the voice.”

Many people of the present time might have such experiences if they would only practise real self-knowledge. Such occurrences happen in the lives of many, many people in the present age. It is not that they do not happen, but that people do not pay attention to them, for such things do not always happen so decisively as in the example given; with their habitual lack of attention, people overlook them. The following is a characteristic example of how unobservant people are of what happens around them.

I knew a school inspector, in a country where a law was passed to the effect that the older teachers, who had not obtained certain certificates, were to be examined. Now this school inspector was an extremely human person, and he said to himself: " The young teachers fresh from college can be asked any question, but it would be cruel to ask the older men who have been in office for twenty or thirty years the same questions. I had better question them about the contents of the books from which they have taught the children year after year," And lo!—most of the teachers knew nothing of what they themselves had been teaching to their pupils. Yet this man was an examiner who understood how to draw out of people what they knew.

This is only one example of how unobservant people are of what takes place around them, even when it concerns their own affairs. We need not then be surprised that things of this kind happen to many people in life, for only by a true, deliberate self-perception do they come to light. If we bring the proper devout attitude to bear on such an event we may experience a very definite feeling—the feeling that from the day our life was given to us as a gift, its course from then onwards must assume a special direction. That is a good feeling, and works like a memory-process when we say to ourselves: “I had reached a karmic crisis; there my life ended.” If a man steeps himself in this devout feeling, he may experience something that makes him realise: “This is not a memory-concept such as I have often experienced in life—it is something of a very special nature.”

In the next lecture I shall be able to speak more fully of what can only be indicated to-day; for this is how a great Initiate of modern times tests those whom he thinks fit to be his followers. For the events which are to take us into the spiritual world proceed from spiritual facts which happen around us, or from a right understanding of them. And such a voice, calling as it does to many people, is not to be regarded as a hallucination; for through such a voice the leader whom we call by the name of Christian Rosenkreuz speaks to those whom he chooses from among the multitude to be his followers. The call proceeds from that Individuality who lived in a special incarnation in the 13th century. So that a man who has an experience of this kind has a sign, a token of recognition, through which he can enter the spiritual world.¹

There may not be many as yet able to recognise this call, but Anthroposophy will work in such a way that, if not in this incarnation, later on men will give heed to it. With most people who have such an experience to-day it is not completed in the sense that one can say of them in this incarnation: “They have met the Initiate who has appointed them his own.” One could say it rather of their life between their last death and their present birth. This is an indication that something happens in the life between death and rebirth; that we experience there important events—perhaps more important than in our life here between birth and death. It may happen, and in individual cases it does, that certain persons now belonging to Christian Rosenkreuz came to him in a former incarnation, but for most people the destiny that is reflected in such an event occurred in their last life between death and rebirth.

I am not saying this to recount something sensational, nor even for the sake of relating this particular occurrence, but for a special reason; and I should like to add something else in this connection, from an experience I have often had in our Movement. I have often found that things I have said are easily forgotten, or retained in a different form from that in which they were said. For this reason I sometimes emphasise important and essential things several times over, not in order to repeat myself. Therefore to-day I repeat that there are many people at the present time who have passed through an experience such as has been described. The point is not that the experience is not there, but that it is not remembered, because proper attention has not been paid to it. Therefore this should be a consolation to those who say to themselves: “I find nothing of the kind, so I do not belong to those who have been chosen in this way.” They can have the assurance that there are countless people at the present time who have experienced something of the kind—I reaffirm this only in order that the real reason for saying these things may be understood.

Such things are told in order to draw our attention again and again to the fact that in a concrete sense, and not through abstract theories, we must find the relation of our soul-life to the spiritual worlds. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science should be for us not merely a theoretical conception of the world, but an inner life-force; we should not merely know, “There is a spiritual world to which man belongs,” but as we go through life we should not only take account of things which stimulate our thinking through the senses, but should grasp with comprehension the connections which show us: “I have my place in the spiritual world, a definite place.” The real, concrete place of the individual in the spiritual world—that is the essential point to which we are calling attention.

In a theoretical sense men try to establish that the world may have a spiritual element, and that man is not to be considered in a materialistic sense, but may have a spiritual element within him. Our particular conception of the world differs from this, for it says to the individual: “This is your special connection with the spiritual world.” More and more we shall be able to ascend to those things which can show us how we must view the world in order to perceive our connection with the Spirit of the Great World, the Macrocosm.

• 1. See the volume entitled Christian Rosenkreuz. Notes of lectures given during the years 1911 and 1912.

When we observe how life takes its course around us, how it throws its waves into our inner life, into everything we are destined to feel, to suffer or to delight in during our present existence on the earth, we can think of several groups or kinds of experiences.

As regards our own faculties and talents, we find, to begin with, that when we succeed in something or other, we may say: being what we are, it is quite natural and understandable that we should succeed in this or that case. But certain failures, perhaps just those that must be called misfortune and calamity,—may also become intelligible when viewed in the whole setting of our nature.

In such cases we may not, perhaps, always be able to prove exactly how this or that failure is connected with our own shortcomings in one direction or another. But when we are obliged to say of ourselves in a general way: In many respects you were a superficial character in your present life, so it is understandable that in certain circumstances you were bound to fail—then we may not immediately perceive the connection between the failure and the shortcomings, but generally speaking we shall realise that if we have been frivolous and superficial, success cannot always be at our finger-tips.

From what has been said you may think that some kind of causal connection could have been evident between what inevitably happened and your faculties or incompetencies. But there are many things in life where, however conscientiously we set to work, we are not able at once to connect success or failure with these faculties or shortcomings; how we ourselves were at fault or why we deserved success, remains a mystery. In short, when thinking more of our inner life we shall be able to distinguish two groups of experiences: in the case of the one group we are aware of the causes of our successes and failures; in the case of the second group we shall not be able to detect any such connection, and that we failed in one particular instance and succeeded in another will seem to be more or less chance. To begin with, we will bear in mind that there is ample evidence in life of this latter group of facts and experiences, and will return to it later.

In contrast to what has just been said, we can think more about our destiny in outer life. There again, two groups of facts will have to be kept in mind. There are cases where it is inwardly clear to us that in connection with events that befall us—not, therefore, those we ourselves initiated—we did certain things and consequently are to blame for these happenings. But of another group of experiences we shall be very liable to say that we can see no connection whatever with what we resolved, what we intended. These are events of which it is usually said that they broke in upon our life as if by chance; they seem to have no connection whatever with anything we ourselves have brought about.

It is this second group of experiences in their relation to our inner life that we shall now consider, that is to say, those happenings where we are unable to perceive any direct or immediate connection with our faculties and shortcomings—outer events, therefore, which we call chance events, of which we cannot at the outset perceive how they could have been brought about by any preceding factor. By way of test, a kind of experiment can be made with these two groups of experiences. The experiment entails no obligations; it is a question merely of putting to the test what will now be characterised.

The experiment can take the following form.—We ask ourselves: How would it be if we were to build up in thought a kind of imaginary human being, saying of him just those things between which we can see no connection by means of our own faculties; we endow this imaginary man with the qualities and faculties which have led, in our own case, to these incomprehensible happenings. We there imagine a man possessing faculties of such a kind that he will inevitably succeed or fail in matters where we cannot say the same in connection with our own shortcomings or faculties. We imagine him as one who has quite deliberately brought about the events which seem to have come into our life by chance.

Simple examples can serve as the starting-point here. Suppose a tile from a roof has fallen upon and injured our shoulders. We shall be inclined to attribute this to chance. But to begin with as an experiment, we now build up in thought an imaginary man who acts in the following strange way. He climbs on a roof, quickly loosens a tile, but only to the point where it still has a certain hold; then he runs quickly to the ground so that when the tile has become quite detached, it falls on his shoulders. The same can be done in the case of all events which seem to have come into our life by chance. We build up an imaginary man who is guilty of or brings about all those things of which in ordinary life we cannot see how they are connected with us.

Such procedure may seem at first to be nothing but a play of fancy. No obligation is incurred by it, but one remarkable thing emerges. When we have imagined such a man with the qualities referred to, he makes a very memorable impression upon us. We cannot get rid of the picture we have thus created in thought; although the picture seems so artificial, it fascinates us, gives the impression that it must, after all, have something to do with ourselves. The feeling we have of this imaginary thought-man accounts for this. If we steep ourselves in this picture it will most certainly not leave us free. A remarkable process then takes shape within our soul, an inner process that is enacted in human beings all the time. We may think of something, make a resolution; for this we need something we once knew, and we use all sorts of artificial means for recalling it. This effort to call up into memory something that has escaped us is, of course, a process in the life of soul—“recollection” as it is usually called. All the thoughts we summon up to help us to remember something are auxiliary thoughts. Just try for once to realise how many and how often such thoughts have to be used and dropped again, in order to get at what we want to know. The purpose of these auxiliary thoughts is to open the way to the recollection needed at the moment.

In exactly the same, but in a far more comprehensive sense, the ‘thought-man’ described represents an auxiliary process. He never leaves us alone; he is astir in us in such a way that we realise: he lives in us as a thought, as something that goes on working, that is actually transformed within us into the idea, the thought, which now flashes up suddenly into our soul in the ordinary process of recollection; it is something that overwhelms us. It is as though something says to us: this being cannot remain as he is, he transforms something within you, he becomes alive, he changes! This forces itself upon us in such a way that the imaginary man whispers to us: This is something that has to do with another earth-existence, not with the present one. A kind of recollection of another earth-existence—that is the thought which quite definitely arises. It is really more a feeling than a thought, a sentient experience, but of such a kind that we feel as though what arises in the soul is what we ourselves once were in an earlier incarnation on this earth.

Anthroposophy, regarded in its entirety, is by no means merely a sum-total of theories, of presentations of facts, but it gives us directives and indications for achieving our aspirations. Anthroposophy says: If you carry out certain exercises you will be led nearer to the point where recollection is easier for you. It can also be said—and this is drawn from the sphere of actual experience: If you adopt this procedure you get an inner impression, a sentient impression, of the person you were in an earlier life. We there achieve what may be called an extension of memory. What discloses itself to us is, to begin with, a thought-reality only, as long as we are building up the imaginary man described. But this imaginary man does not remain a thought-being. He transforms himself into sentient impressions, impressions in the life of soul, and while this is going on we realise that this experience has something to do with our earlier incarnation. Our memory extends to this earlier incarnation.

In this present incarnation we remember those things in which our thoughts participated. But in ordinary life, what has played into our life of feeling does not so easily remain vivid and alive. If you try to think back to something that caused you great pain ten or twenty years ago, you will be able to recall the mental picture of it without difficulty; you will be able to cast your thoughts back to what then took place; but you cannot recapture the actual, immediate experience of the pain felt at the time. The pain fades, the remembrance of it streams into the life of ideation. What has here been described is a memory in the soul, a memory belonging to the life of feeling. And as such we actually feel our earlier incarnation. There does, in fact, arise what may be called a remembrance of earlier incarnations. It is not possible immediately to perceive what is playing over into the present incarnation, what is actually the bearer of the remembrance of earlier incarnations. Consider how intimately our thoughts are united with what gives expression to them, with our speech and language. Language is the embodiment of the world of thoughts and ideas. In each life, every human being has to learn the language anew. A child of the very greatest philologist or linguist has to learn his mother-tongue by dint of effort. There has yet to be a case of a grammar-school boy learning Greek with ease because he rapidly remembered the Greek he had spoken in earlier incarnations!

The poet Hebbel jotted down one or two thoughts for the plan of a drama he intended to write. It is a pity that he did not actually carry out this project, for it would have been an extremely interesting drama. The theme was to have been that Plato, reincarnated as a school-boy, received the very lowest marks for his understanding of the Plato of old! We need not remind ourselves that some teachers are severe, or pedantic. We realise that what Hebbel jotted down is due to the fact that the element of thought, which is also in play in the mental pictures of immediate experiences, is limited more or less to the present incarnation. As we have now heard, the first impression of the earlier incarnation comes as a direct memory in the life of feeling, as a new kind of memory. The impression we get when this memory arises from the imaginary man we have created in thought, is more like a feeling, but of such a kind that we realise: the impression comes from some being who once existed and who you yourself were. Something that is like a feeling arising in an act of remembrance is what comes to us as a first impression of the earlier incarnation.

The creation of an imaginary man in thought is simply a means of proving to us that this means is something that transforms itself into an impression in the life of soul, or the life of feeling. Everyone who comes to Anthroposophy has the opportunity of carrying out what has now been described. And if he does so he will actually receive an inner impression of which—to use a different illustration—he might speak as follows. I once saw a landscape; I have forgotten what it actually looked like, but I know it delighted me! If this happened during the present life, the landscape will no longer make a very vivid impression of feeling; but if the impression of the landscape came from an earlier incarnation the impression will be particularly vivid. In the form of a feeling we can obtain a very vivid impression of our earlier incarnation. And if we then observe such impressions objectively, we may at times experience something like a feeling of bitterness, bitter-sweetness or acidity from what emerges as the transformation of the imaginary thought-man. This bitter-sweet or some such feeling is the impression made upon us by our earlier incarnation; it is an impression of feeling, an impression in the life of soul.

The endeavour has now been made to draw attention to something that can ultimately promote in every human being a kind of certainty of having existed in an earlier life—certainty through having engendered a feeling of inner impressions which he knows were most definitely not received in this present life. Such an impression, however, arises the same way as a recollection arises in ordinary life. We may now ask: How can one know that the impression is actually a recollection? There it can only be said that to ‘prove’ such a thing is not possible. But the process is the same as it is elsewhere in life, when we remember something and are in a sound state of mind. We know there that what arises within us in thought is actually related to something we have experienced. The experience itself gives the certainty. What we picture in the way indicated gives us the certainty that the impression which arises in the soul is not related to anything that had to do with us in the present life but to something in the earlier life.

We have there called forth in ourselves by artificial means, something that brings us into connection with our earlier life. We can also use many different kinds of experiences as tests, and eventually awaken in ourselves feelings of earlier lives.

Here again, from a different aspect, the experiences we have in life can be divided into groups. In the one group may be included the sufferings, sorrows and obstacles we have encountered; in a second group may be included the joys, happinesses and advantages in our life. Again as a test, we can take the following standpoint, and say: Yes, we have had these sorrows, these sufferings. Being what we are in this incarnation, with normal life running its course, our sorrows and sufferings are dire misfortunes, something that we would gladly avoid. By way of a test, let us not take this attitude but assume that for a certain reason we ourselves brought about these sorrows, sufferings and obstacles, realising that owing to our earlier lives—if there have actually been such lives—we have become in a sense more imperfect because of what we have done. After all, we do not only become more perfect through the successive incarnations but also, in a certain respect, more imperfect. When we have affronted or injured some human being, are we not more imperfect than we were before? We have not only affronted him, we have taken something away from ourself; as a personality taken as a whole, our worth would be greater if we had not done this thing. Many such actions are marked on our score and our imperfection remains because of them. If we have affronted some human being and desire to regain our previous worth, what must happen? We must make compensation for the affront, we must place into the world a counterbalancing deed, we must discover some means of compelling ourselves to overcome something. And if we think in this way about our sufferings and sorrows, we shall be able in many instances to say: These sufferings and sorrows, if we surmount them, give us strength to overcome our imperfections. Through suffering we can make progress.

In normal life we do not think in this way; we set our face against suffering. But we can also say the following: Every sorrow, every suffering, every obstacle in life should be an indication of the fact that we have within us a man who is cleverer than we ourselves are. Although the man we ourselves are is the one of whom we are conscious, we regard him for a time as being the less clever; within us we have a cleverer man who slumbers in the depths of our soul. With our ordinary consciousness we resist sorrows and sufferings but the cleverer man leads us towards these sufferings in defiance of our consciousness because by overcoming them we can strip off something. He guides us to the sorrows and sufferings, directs us to undergo them. This may, to begin with, be an oppressive thought but it carries with it no obligation; we can, if we so wish, use it once only, by way of trial. We can say: Within us there is a cleverer man who guides us to sufferings and sorrows, to something that in our conscious life we should like most of all to have avoided. We think of him as the cleverer man. In this way we are led to the realisation which many find disturbing, namely that this cleverer man guides us always towards what we do not like. This, then, we will take as an assumption: There is a cleverer man within us who guides us to what we do not like in order that we may make progress.

But let us still do something else. Let us take our joys, our advantages, our happinesses, and say to ourselves, again by way of trial: How would it be if you were to conceive the idea—irrespectively of how it tallies with the actual reality—that you have simply not deserved these happinesses, these advantages; they have come to you through the Grace of higher, spiritual Powers. It need not be so in every case, but we will assume, by way of test, that all our sorrows and sufferings were brought about because the cleverer man within us guided us to them, because we recognise that in consequence of our imperfections they were necessary for us and that we can overcome them only through such experiences. And then we assume the opposite: That our happinesses are not due to our own merit but have been vouchsafed to us by spiritual Powers.

Again this thought may be a bitter pill for the vain to swallow, but if, as a test, a man is capable of forming such a thought with all intensity, he will be led to the feeling—because again it undergoes a transformation and in so far as it lacks effectiveness, rectifies itself:—In you there lives something that has nothing to do with your ordinary consciousness, that lies deeper than anything you have experienced consciously in this life; there is a cleverer man within you who gladly turns to the eternal, divine-spiritual Powers pervading the world. Then it becomes an inner certainty that behind the outer there is an inner, higher individuality. Through such thought-exercises we grow to be conscious of the eternal, spiritual core of our being, and this is of extraordinary importance. So there again we have something which it lies in our power to carry out.

In every respect Anthroposophy can be a guide, not only towards knowledge of the existence of another world, but towards feeling oneself as a citizen of another world, as an individuality who passes through many incarnations.

There are experiences of still a third kind. Admittedly it will be more difficult to make use of these experiences for the purpose of gaining an inner knowledge of karma and reincarnation. But even if what will now be said is difficult, it can again be used again by way of trial. And if it is honestly applied to external life it will dawn upon us clearly—as a probability to begin with, but then as an ever-growing certainty—that our present life is connected with an earlier one.

Let us assume that in our present life between birth and death we have already reached or passed our thirtieth year. (Those below that age may also have corresponding experiences). We reflect about the fact that somewhere near our thirtieth year we were brought into contact with some person in the outside world, that between the ages of thirty and forty many different connections have been established with human beings in the outside world. These connections seem to have been made during the most mature stage of our life so that our whole being was involved in them. Reflection discloses that it is indeed so. But reflection based on the principles and knowledge of Spiritual Science can lead us to realise the truth of what will now be said—not as the outcome of mere reflection but of spiritual-scientific investigation. What I am saying has not been discovered merely through logical thinking; it has been established by spiritual-scientific research, but logical thinking can confirm the facts and find them reasonable. We know how the several members of man's constitution unfold in the course of life: in the seventh year, the ether-body; in the fourteenth year, the astral body; in the twenty-first year the sentient-soul, in the twenty-eighth year the intellectual or mind-soul and in the thirty-fifth year the consciousness-soul (spiritual soul). Reflecting on this, we can say: In the period from the thirtieth year to the fortieth year we are concerned with the unfolding of the mind-soul and the spiritual soul.

The mind-soul and the spiritual soul are those forces in our nature which bring us into the closest contact of all with the outer physical world, for they unfold at the very age in life when our intercourse with that world is more active than at any other time. In earliest childhood, the forces belonging to our physical body are directed, determined, activated, by what is still entirely enclosed within us. The causal element engendered in previous incarnations, whatever went with us through the Gate of Death, the spiritual forces we have garnered—everything we bring with us from the earlier life works and weaves in the upbuilding of our physical body. It is at work unceasingly and invisibly from within outwards; as the years go by, this influence diminishes and the period of life approaches when the old forces have produced the body and we confront the world with a finished organism; what we bear within us has come to expression in our external body. At about the thirtieth year—it may be somewhat earlier or somewhat later—we confront the world in the most strongly physical sense; in our intercourse with the world we are connected more closely with the physical plane than during any other period of life. We may think that the relationships in life into which we now enter are more physically intelligible than any others, but the fact is that such relationships are least of all connected with the forces which work and weave in us from birth onwards. Nevertheless we may take it for granted that at about the age of thirty we are not led by chance to people who are destined, precisely then, to appear in our environment. We must far rather assume that there too our karma is at work, that these people too have something to do with one of our earlier incarnations.

Facts of Spiritual Science investigated at various times show that very often the people with whom we come into contact somewhere around our thirtieth year are related to us in such a way that in most cases we were connected with them at the beginning of the immediately preceding incarnation—or it may have been earlier still—as parents, or brothers or sisters. At first this seems a strange and astonishing fact. Although it need not inevitably be so, many cases indicate to spiritual-scientific investigation that in very truth our parents, or those who were by our side at the beginning of our previous life, who gave us our place in the physical world but from whom in later life we grew away, are karmically connected with us in such a way that in our new life we are not again guided to them in early childhood but only when we have come most completely on to the physical plane. It need not always be exactly like this, for spiritual-scientific research shows very frequently that it is not until a subsequent incarnation that those who are then our parents, brothers or sisters, or blood-relations in general, are the people we found around us in the present incarnation at about the time of our thirtieth year. So the acquaintances we make somewhere about the age of thirty in any one incarnation may have been, or will be, persons related to us by blood in a previous or subsequent incarnation. It is therefore useful to say to oneself: The personalities with whom life brings you in contact in your thirties were once around you as parents or brothers and sisters or you can anticipate that in one of your next incarnations they will have this relationship with you.

The reverse also holds good. If we think of those personalities whom we choose least of all voluntarily through forces suitable for application on the physical plane—that is to say, our parents, our brothers and sisters who were around us at the beginning of life—if we think of these personalities we shall very often find that precisely those who accompany us into life from childhood onwards were deliberately chosen by us in another incarnation to be near us while we were in the thirties. In other words, in the middle of the preceding life we ourselves chose out those who in the present life have become our parents, brothers or sisters.

So the remarkable and very interesting fact emerges that our relationships with the personalities with whom we come to be associated are not the same in the successive incarnations; also that we do not encounter these people at the same age in life as previously. Neither can it be said that exactly the opposite holds good. Furthermore it is not the personalities who were with us at the end of an earlier life who are connected, in a different incarnation, with the beginning of our life, but those with whom we were associated in the middle period of life. So neither those personalities with whom we are together at the beginning of life, nor those with us at its end, but those with whom we come into contact in the middle of life, were around us as blood-relations at the beginning of an earlier incarnation. Those who were around us then, when our life was beginning, appear in the middle of our present life; and of those who were around us at the beginning of our present life we can anticipate that we shall find ourselves together with them in the middle of one of our subsequent incarnations, that they will then come into connection with us as freely chosen companions in life. Karmic relationships are indeed mysterious.

What I have now said is the outcome of spiritual-scientific investigation. But I repeat: if, in the way opened up by this investigation, we reflect about the inner connections between the beginning of life in one of our incarnations and the middle of life in another, we shall realise that this is not void of sense or usefulness. The other aspect is that when such things are brought to our notice and we adopt an intelligent attitude to them, they bring clarity and illumination. Life is clarified if we do not simply accept such things passively—not to say dull-wittedly; it is clarified if we try to grasp, to understand, what comes to us in life in such a way that the relationships which are bound to remain elusive as long as karma is only spoken of in the abstract, become concretely perceptible.

It is useful to reflect about the question: Why is it that in the middle of our life we are actually driven by karma, seemingly with complete mental awareness, to form some acquaintanceship which does not appear to have been made quite independently and objectively? The reason is that such persons were related to us by blood in the earlier life and our karma leads them to us now because we have some connection with them.

Whenever we reflect in this way about the course of our own life, we shall see that light is shed upon it. Although we may be mistaken in some particular instance, and even if we err in our conclusions ten times over, nevertheless we may well hit upon the truth in regard to someone who comes into our ken. And when such reflections lead us to say: Somewhere or other I have met this person—thus thought is like a signpost pointing the way to other things which in different circumstances would not have occurred to us and which, taken in their whole setting, give us ever-growing certainty of the correctness of particular facts.

Karmic connections are not of such a nature that they can be discerned in one sudden flash. The highest, most important facts of knowledge regarding life, those that really do shed light upon it, must be acquired slowly and by degrees. This is not a welcome thought. It is easier to believe that some flash of illumination might enable it to be said: “In an earlier life I was associated with this or that person,” or “I myself was this or that individual.” It may be tiresome to think that all this must be a matter of knowledge slowly acquired, but that is the case nevertheless. Even if we merely cherish the belief that it might possibly be so, investigation must be repeated time and time again before the belief will become certainty. Even in cases where probability grows constantly stronger, investigation leads us farther. We erect barricades against the spiritual world if we allow ourselves to form instantaneous judgments in these matters.

Try to ponder over what has been said to-day about the acquaintanceships made in the middle period of life and their connection with individuals who were near to us in a preceding incarnation. This will lead to very fruitful thoughts, especially if taken together with what is said in the book, The Education of the Child in the light of Anthroposophy. It will then be unambiguously clear that the outcome of your reflection tallies with what is set forth in that book.

But an earnest warning must be added to what has been said to-day. The genuine investigator guards against drawing conclusions; he lets the things come to him of themselves. Once they are there, he first puts them to the test of ordinary logic. Repetition will then be impossible of something that recently happened to me, not for the first time, and is very characteristic of the attitude adopted to Anthroposophy to-day. A very clever man—I say this without irony, fully recognising that he has a brilliant mind—said the following to me: “When I read what is contained in your book, An Outline of Occult Science, I am bound to admit that it seems so logical, to tally so completely with other manifest facts in the world, that I cannot help coming to the conclusion that these things could also be discovered through pure reflection; they need not necessarily be the outcome of super-sensible investigation. The things said in this book are in no way questionable or dubious; they tally with the reality.” I was able to assure this gentleman of my conviction that it would not have been possible for me to discover them through mere reflection, nor that with great respect for his cleverness, could I believe he would have discovered them by that means alone. It is absolutely true that whatever in the domain of Spiritual Science is capable of being logically comprehended simply cannot be discovered by mere reflection! The fact that some matter can be put to the test of logic and then grasped, should be no ground for doubting its spiritual-scientific origin. On the contrary, I am sure it must be reassuring to know that the communications made by Spiritual Science can be recognised through logical reflection as being unquestionably correct; it cannot possibly be the ambition of the spiritual investigator to make illogical statements for the sake of inspiring belief! As you see, the spiritual investigator himself cannot take the standpoint that he discovers such things through reflection. But if we reflect about things that have been discovered by the methods of Spiritual Science, they may seem so logical, even too logical to allow us to believe any longer that they actually come from spiritual-scientific sources. And this applies to everything said to have been the outcome of genuine spiritual-scientific investigation.

If, to begin with, the things that have been said to-day seem grotesque, try for once to apply logical thinking to them. Truly, if spiritual facts had not led me to these things, I should not have deduced them from ordinary, logical thinking; but once they have been discovered they can be put to the test of logic. And then it will be found that the more meticulously and conscientiously we set about testing them, the more clearly it will emerge that everything tallies. Even in the case of matters where accuracy cannot really be tested, from the very way in which the various factors fit into their settings, it will be found that they give the impression of being not only in the highest degree probable, but bordering on certainty—as in the case, for example, of what has been said about parents and brothers and sisters in one life and acquaintances made in the middle of another life. Moreover such certainty proves to be well-founded when things are put to the test of life itself. In many cases we shall view our own behaviour and that of others in a quite different light if we confront someone we meet in the middle period of life, as if, in the preceding life, the relationship between us had been that of parent, brother or sister. The whole relationship will thereby become much more fruitful than if we go through life with drowsy inattentiveness.

And so we can say: More and more, Anthroposophy becomes something that does not merely give us knowledge of life but directives as to how to conceive of life's relationships in such a way that light will be shed upon them not only for our own satisfaction, but also for our conduct and tasks in life. It is important to discard the thought that in this way we impair a spontaneous response to life. Only the timid, those who lack a really earnest purpose in life, can believe such a thing. We, however, must realise that by gaining closer knowledge of life we make it more fruitful, inwardly richer. What comes to us in life should be carried, through Anthroposophy, into horizons where all our forces become more fertile, more full of confidence, a greater stimulus to hope, than they were before.

The lecture yesterday dealt with questions of karma, and the endeavour was made to speak of them in such a way that they appear to us to be linked with inner processes in the soul, with something that is within our reach. It was said that certain tentative measures can be taken and that in this way a conviction of the truth of the law of karma may be awakened. If such questions are introduced again and again into our studies, this is because it is necessary to realise with increasing clarity how Anthroposophy, in the genuine sense of the word, is related to life itself and to the whole evolution of man.

There is no doubt that at least an approximately adequate idea can be formed of the change that will gradually and inevitably take place in all human life if a considerable number of people are convinced of the truths upon which studies such as those of yesterday are based. By steeping themselves in such truths, men's attitude to life will be quite different and life itself will change in consequence.

This brings us to the very important question—and it is a question of conscience for those who enter the Anthroposophical Movement: What is it, in reality, that makes a man of the modern age into an anthroposophist?—Misunderstanding may easily arise when endeavours are made to answer this question, for even to-day many people—including those who belong to us—still confuse the Anthroposophical Movement with some form of external organisation. There is nothing to be said against an external organisation, which from a certain point of view must exist in order to make it possible for Anthroposophy to be cultivated on the physical plane; but it is important to realise that all human beings whose interest in questions of the spiritual life is earnest and sincere and who wish to deepen their world-view in accordance with the principles of this spiritual Movement, can belong to such an organisation. From this it is obvious that no dogmatic, positive declaration of belief can be demanded from those who attach themselves to such an organisation. But it is a different matter to speak quite precisely of what makes a man of the present age into an anthroposophist.

The conviction that a spiritual world must be taken into account is, of course, the starting-point of anthroposophical conviction, and this must always be stressed when Anthroposophy is introduced to the public and reference made to its tasks, aims and present mission in life. But in anthroposophical circles themselves it must be realised that what makes the anthroposophist is something much more definite, much more decisive than the mere conviction of the existence of a spiritual world. After all, this conviction has always been held in circles that were not utterly materialistic. What constitutes a modern anthroposophist and, fundamentally speaking, was not contained in the theosophy of Jacob Boehme, for example, or of other earlier theosophists, is something towards which the efforts of our Western culture are strenuously directed—so much so, on the one side, that such efforts have become characteristic of the strivings of many human beings. But on the other side there is the fact that what particularly characterises the anthroposophist is still vehemently attacked by external culture and education, is still regarded as nonsense.

We do, of course, learn many things through Anthroposophy. We learn about the evolution of humanity, even about the evolution of our earth and planetary system. All these things belong to the fundamentals required by one who desires to become an anthroposophist. But what is of particular importance for the modern anthroposophist is the gaining of conviction with regard to reincarnation and karma. The way in which men gain this conviction, how they succeed in spreading the thought of reincarnation and karma—it is this that from now onwards will essentially transform modern life, will create new forms of life, an entirely new social life, of the kind that is necessary if human culture is not to decline but rise to a higher level. Experiences in the life of soul such as were described yesterday are, fundamentally speaking, within the reach of every modern man, and if only he has sufficient energy and tenacity of purpose he will certainly become inwardly convinced of the truth of reincarnation and karma. But the whole character of our present age is pitted against what must be the aim of true Anthroposophy.

Perhaps this fundamental character of our present age nowhere expresses itself so radically and typically as in the fact that considerable interest is shown in the central questions of religion, in the evolution of the world and of man, and even in karma and reincarnation. When such questions extend to the specific tenets of religions—concerning, let us say, the nature of the Buddha or of Christ—when such questions are discussed to-day, evidence of widespread interest will be apparent. But this interest peters out the moment we speak in concrete detail about how Anthroposophy must penetrate into every domain of external life. That interest dwindles is, after all, very understandable. Men have their places in external life, they hold various positions in the world. With all its organisations and institutions the modern world appears not unlike a vast emporium with the individual human being working in it as a wheel, or something of the kind. This indeed is what he feels himself to be, with his labour, his anxieties, his occupation from morning till evening, and he knows nothing beyond the fact that he is obliged to fit into this outer world-order. Then, side by side with these conditions, arises the question that must exercise every soul who is able to look even a little beyond what everyday life offers: it is the question of the soul's destiny, of the beginning and end of the soul's life, its connection with divine-spiritual Beings and Powers holding sway in the universe. And between what everyday life with its cares and anxieties brings to man and what he receives in the domain of Anthroposophy yawns a deep abyss.

It may be said that for most men of the present age there is almost no harmony between their convictions and what they do and think in their outer, everyday life. If some concrete question is raised in public and dealt with in the light of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy, it will at once be evident that the interest which was still there in the case of general questions of religion and the like, no longer exists when it comes to matters of a really concrete kind. It cannot of course be expected that Anthroposophy will at once make its way into life, that everyone will immediately bring it to expression in whatever he is doing. But the world must be made to realise that it is the mission of Spiritual Science to introduce into life, to incorporate in life, everything that will emanate from a soul who has become convinced of the truth of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. And so the characteristic stamp of the modern anthroposophist may be said to be that he is on the way to acquiring a firmly based, inner conviction of the validity of the idea of reincarnation and karma. All the rest will then follow of itself.

Naturally it will not do to think: Now, reinforced with the knowledge of reincarnation and karma, I shall at once be able to grapple with external life. That, of course, is not possible. The essential thing is to understand how the truths of reincarnation and karma can penetrate into external life in such a way that they become its guiding principles.

Now let us consider how karma works through the different incarnations. When a human being comes into the world, his powers and capacities must, after all, be regarded as the effects of causes he himself engendered in earlier incarnations. If this idea is led to its consistent conclusion, every human being must be treated as if he were a kind of enigma, as a being hovering in the dark foundations of his earlier incarnations. If this idea of karma is put earnestly into effect a significant change will be brought about, not in methods of education only but in the whole of life. If that were achieved, the idea of karma, instead of being merely an anthroposophical idea, would be transformed into something that takes hold of practical life itself, would become a really potent factor in life.

But all external life as it presents itself to-day is the picture of a social condition which, in its development, has excluded, has indeed refuted, the idea of reincarnation and karma. External life to-day is organised almost as if there were a deliberate desire to quash any possibility of men being able, through their own inner development, to discover the reality of reincarnation and karma. In point of fact there is, for example, nothing more hostile to a real conviction of reincarnation and karma than the principle that a man must be remunerated, must receive wages corresponding to his actual labour. To speak like this seems utterly eccentric! Do not, however, take this example to imply that Anthroposophy would wish to throw to the winds the principles of an established practice and to introduce a new social order overnight! That cannot be. But men must become alive to the thought that no fundamental conviction of reincarnation can ever flourish in a world-order in which it is held that there must be a direct correspondence between wages and labour, in which man is obliged, through the labour he performs, to obtain the necessities of life. Naturally the prevailing conditions must remain, to begin with, for it will be clear, above all to anthroposophists, that what exists is in turn the outcome of karmic law and in this sense is justified and inevitable. But it is absolutely essential for men to be able to realise that what can, nay must, ensue from recognition of the idea of reincarnation and karma, unfolds as a new seed in the organism of our world-order.

Above all it follows from the idea of karma that we should not feel ourselves to have been placed by chance into the world-order, into the positions in which we find ourselves in life; on the contrary, we should feel that a kind of subconscious decision of the will underlies it, that as the result of our earlier incarnations, before we passed into this earthly existence out of the spiritual world between death and a new birth, we resolved in the spiritual world—a resolve we merely forgot when we incarnated in the body—to occupy the very position in which we now find ourselves. Consequently it is the outcome of a pre-natal, pre-earthly decision of the will that we are assigned to our particular place in life and have the actual inclination to steer towards the blows of destiny that befall us. If a man then becomes convinced of the truth of the law of karma, he will inevitably begin to incline towards, even possibly to love, the position in the world in which he has placed himself—no matter what it may be.

You may say: You are telling us very strange things. They may be all very well for poets or writers, or others engaged in spiritual pursuits. To such people you do well to preach that they should love, delight in, be devoted to, their particular positions in life. But what of all those human beings whose situations, in their very nature and with the labours they involve, cannot possibly be particularly welcome but will inevitably evoke the feeling of belonging to the neglected or oppressed?—Who would deny that a large proportion of the efforts made in modern civilisation aim at introducing into life continuous improvements which may help to get rid of the discontent at having been placed in such unpleasant situations? How numerous are the different institutions and sectarian endeavours to better life in all directions in order that even from the external aspect the earthly life of mankind might be bearable!

None of these endeavours reckon with the fact that the kind of discontent inevitably brought by life to numbers of people to-day is connected in many respects with the whole course taken by the evolution of humanity, that fundamentally speaking, the way in which men developed in past ages led to karma of this kind, and that out of the combined working of these different karmas the present state of human civilisation has proceeded. In characterising this state of civilisation we can only say that it is complex in the highest degree. It must also be said that the connection between what man does, what he carries out, and what he loves, is weakening all the time. And if we were to count those people who in their positions in external life to-day are obliged to engage in some activity that goes much against the grain, their number would by far exceed the number of those who affirm: I can only say that I love my external occupation, that it brings me happiness and contentment.

Only recently I heard of a strange statement made by someone to a friend. He said: ‘When I look back over my life in all its details I confess that if I had to live through it again from childhood to the present moment, I should do exactly the same things I have done up to now.’—The friend replied: ‘Then you are one of those most rarely to be found at the present time!’—The friend was probably right, as far as most men of the modern age are concerned. Not many of our contemporaries would assert that, if it depended on them, they would without hesitation begin life all over again, together with everything it has brought in the way of happiness, sorrow, blows of fate, obstacles, and would be quite content if everything were exactly the same again.

It cannot be said that the fact just mentioned—namely that there are so few people nowadays who would be willing to recapitulate the karma of their present life together with all its details—it cannot be said that this is unconnected with what the prevailing cultural state of humanity has brought in its train. Our life has become more complex but it has been made so by the different karmas of the personalities living on the earth to-day. Of that there can be no doubt at all. Nor will those who have the slightest insight into the course taken by human evolution be able to speak of any possibility of a less complicated life in the future. On the contrary, the complexity of external life will steadily increase and however many activities are taken over from man in the future by machines, there can be very few lives of happiness in this present incarnation unless conditions quite different from those now prevailing are brought about. And these different conditions must be the result of the human soul being convinced of the truth of reincarnation and karma.

From this it will be realised that something quite different must run parallel with the complexity of external civilisation. What is it that will be necessary to ensure that men become more and more deeply permeated with the truth of reincarnation and karma? What will be necessary in order that the concept of reincarnation and karma may comparatively soon instil itself into our education, take hold of human beings even in childhood, in the way that children now are convinced of the truth of the Copernican theory of the universe?

What was it that enabled the Copernican theory of the universe to lay hold of men's minds? This Copernican world-system has had a peculiar destiny. I am not going to speak about the theory itself but only about its entry into the world. Remember that this world-system was thought out by a Christian dignitary and that Copernicus's own conception of it was such that he felt it permissible to dedicate to the pope the work in which he elaborated his hypothesis. He believed that his conclusions were entirely in keeping with Christianity.¹ Was any proof of the truth of Copernicanism available at that time? Could anyone have demonstrated the truth of its conclusions? Nobody could have done so. Yet think of the rapidity with which it made its way into humanity. Since when has proof been available? To the extent to which it is correct, only since the fifties of the 19th century, only since Foucault's experiment with the pendulum.² Before then there was no proof that the earth rotates. It is nonsense to state that Copernicus was also able to prove what he had presented and investigated as an hypothesis; this also holds good of the statement that the earth rotates on its axis.

Only since it was discovered that a swinging pendulum has the tendency to maintain the plane of its oscillation even in opposition to the rotation of the earth and that if a long pendulum is allowed to swing, then the direction of oscillation rotates in relation to the earth's surface, could the conclusion be drawn: it is the earth beneath the pendulum which must have rotated. This experiment, which afforded the first actual proof that the earth moves, was not made until the 19th century. Earlier than that there was no wholly satisfactory possibility of regarding Copernicanism as being anything more than an hypothesis. Nevertheless its effect upon the human mind in the modern age was so great that until the year 1822 his book was on the Index, in spite of the fact that Copernicus had believed it permissible to dedicate it to the Pope. Not until the year 1822 was the book on which Copernicanism was based, removed from the Index—before, therefore, any real proof of its correctness was available. The power of the impulse with which the Copernican theory of the universe instilled itself into the human mind finally compelled the Church to recognise it as non-heretical.

I have always considered it deeply symptomatic that this knowledge of the earth's motion was first imparted to me as a boy at school, not by an ordinary teacher, but by a priest.³—Who can possibly doubt that Copernicanism has taken firm root, even in the minds of children?—I am not speaking now of its truths and its errors. If culture is not to fall into decline, the truths of reincarnation and karma must take equally firm root—but the time that humanity has at its disposal for this is not as long as it was in the case of Copernicanism. And it is incumbent upon those who call themselves anthroposophists to-day to play their part in ensuring that the truths of reincarnation and karma shall flow even into the minds of the young. This of course does not mean that anthroposophists who have children should inculcate this into them as a dogma. Insight is what is needed.

I have not spoken of Copernicanism without reason. From the success of Copernicanism we can learn what will ensure the spread of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. What, then, were the factors responsible for the rapid spread of Copernicanism?—I shall now be saying something terribly heretical, something that will seem quite atrocious to the modern mind. But what matters is that Anthroposophy shall be taken as earnestly and as profoundly as Christianity was taken by the first Christians, who also arrayed themselves against the conditions then prevailing. If Anthroposophy is not taken with equal seriousness by those who profess to be its adherents, it cannot achieve for humanity what must be achieved.

I have now to say something quite atrocious, and it is this.—Copernicanism, what men learn to-day as the Copernican theory of the universe—the great merits of which and therewith its significance as a cultural factor of the very first order are truly not disputed—this theory was able to take root in the human soul because to be a believer in this world-system it is possible to be a superficial thinker. Superficiality and externality contribute to a more rapid conviction of Copernicanism. This is not to minimise its significance for humanity. But it can truly be said that a man need not be very profound, need not deepen himself inwardly, before accepting Copernicanism; he must far rather externalise his thinking. And indeed a high degree of externalisation has been responsible for trivial utterances such as those to be found in modern monistic books, where it is said, actually with a touch of fervour: Compared with other worlds, the earth, as man's habitation, is a speck of dust in the universe.⁴ This is a futile statement for the simple reason that this ‘speck of dust,’ with all that belongs to it, is a vital concern of man in terrestrial existence, and the other worlds in the universe with which the earth is compared are of less importance to him. The evolution of humanity was obliged to become completely externalised to be quickly capable of accepting Copernicanism.

But what must men do in order to assimilate the teaching of reincarnation and karma?—This teaching must meet with far more rapid success if humanity is not to fall into decline. What is it that is necessary to enable it to take footing, even in the minds of children? Externalisation was necessary for the acceptance of Copernicanism; inner deepening is necessary for realising the truths of reincarnation and karma, the capacity to take in earnest such things as were spoken of yesterday, to penetrate into intimate matters of the life of soul, into things that every soul must experience in the deep foundations of its own core of being. The results and consequences of Copernicanism in present-day culture are paraded everywhere nowadays, in every popular publication, and the fact that all these things can be presented in pictures, even, whenever possible, in cinematographs, is regarded as a very special triumph. This already characterises the tremendous externalisation of our cultural life.

Little can be shown in pictures, little can be actually communicated about the intimacies of the truths embraced in the words ‘reincarnation’ and ‘karma.’ To realise that the conviction of reincarnation and karma is well-founded depends upon a deepened understanding of such things as were said in the lecture yesterday. And so the very opposite of what is habitual in the external culture of to-day is necessary if the idea of reincarnation and karma is to take root in humanity. That is why such insistence is laid upon this deepening—in the domain of Anthroposophy too. Although it cannot be denied that certain schematic presentations may be useful for an intellectual grasp of fundamental truths, it must nevertheless be realised that what is of primary importance in Anthroposophy is to turn our attention to the laws operating in the depths of the soul, to what is at work inwardly, beneath the forces of the soul, as the outer, physical laws are at work in the worlds of time and space.

There is very little understanding to-day of the laws of karma. Is there anyone who as an enlightened man in the sense of modern culture, would not maintain that humanity has outgrown the stage of childhood, the stage of faith and has reached the stage of manhood where knowledge can take the place of faith? Such utterances are to be heard perpetually and give rise to a great deal that deludes people in the outside world but should never delude anthroposophists—utterances to the effect that faith must be replaced by knowledge.

But none of these tirades on the subject of faith and knowledge take into consideration what may be called karmic relationships in life. One who is capable of spiritual-scientific investigation and observes particularly pious, devotional natures among people of the present time, will ask himself: Why is this or that person so pious, so devout? Why is there in him the fervour of faith, the enthusiasm, a veritable genius for religious devoutness, for directing his thoughts to the super-sensible world?—If the investigator asks these questions he will find a remarkable answer to them. If in the case of these devout people in whom faith did not, perhaps, become an important factor in their lives until a comparatively advanced age, we go back to earlier incarnations, the strange fact is discovered that in preceding incarnations these individualities were men of learning, men of knowledge. The scholarship, the element of intelligence in their earlier incarnations has been transformed, in the present incarnation, into the element of faith. There we have one of those strange facts of karma.

Forgive me if I now say something that nobody sitting here will take amiss but would shock many in the outside world who swear by and are willing to accept only what is presented by the senses and the intellect that is dependent on the brain. In people who because of strongly materialistic tendencies no longer desire to have faith, but knowledge only, we find—and this is a very enigmatic fact—dull-wittedness, obtuseness, in the preceding incarnation. Genuine investigation of the different incarnations, therefore, yields this strange result, that ardently devout natures, people who are not fanatic but inwardly steadfast in their devotion to the higher worlds, developed the quality of faith they now possess on the foundation of knowledge gained in earlier incarnations; whereas knowledge founded on materialism is the outcome of obtuseness to views of the world in earlier incarnations.

Think how the whole conception of life changes if the gaze is widened from the immediate present to what the human individuality experiences through the different incarnations!

Many a quality upon which man prides himself in the present incarnation assumes a strange aspect when considered in the setting of how it was acquired in the preceding incarnation. Viewed in the light of reincarnation, many things will seem less incredible. We need think only of how, with these inner forces of soul, a man develops in one incarnation; we need observe only the power of faith in the soul, the power of soul that may inhere in faith and belief in something that as super-sensible reality transcends the phenomena of ordinary sense-perception. A materialistic monist may strongly oppose this, insisting that knowledge alone is valid, that faith has no sure foundation—but against this there is another fact, namely that the power of faith in the soul has a life-giving effect upon the astral body, whereas absence of faith, scepticism, parches and dries it up. Faith works upon the astral body as nourishment works upon the physical body. And is it not important to realise what faith does for man, for his well-being, for his healthiness of soul, and—because this is also the determining factor for physical health—for his body too? Is it not strange that on the one side there should be the desire to abolish faith, while on the other side a man who is incapable of faith is bound to have a barren, withered astral body? Even by observing the one life only this can be recognised. It is not necessary to survey a series of incarnations, for it can be recognised in the one. We can therefore say: Lack of faith, scepticism, dries up our astral body; if we lack faith we impoverish ourselves and in the following incarnation our individuality is drained dry. Lack of faith makes us obtuse in the next incarnation, incapable of acquiring knowledge. To contrast knowledge with faith is the outcome of worldly, jejune logic. For those who have insight into these things, all the palaver about faith and knowledge has about as much sense as there would be in a discussion where one speaker declares that up to now human progress has depended more upon men, while the other maintains that women have played the more important part. In the stage of childhood, therefore, the one sex is held to be more important, but at the present stage, the other! For those who are cognisant of the spiritual facts it is clear that faith and knowledge are related to each other as the two sexes are related in outer, physical life. This must be borne in mind as a trenchant and significant fact—and then we shall be able to see the matter in its true light. The parallelism goes so far that it may be said: Just as the sex usually alternates in the successive incarnations, so, as a rule, an incarnation with a more intellectual trend follows one more inclined towards faith, then again towards intellectuality, and so forth. There are, of course, exceptions—there may be several consecutive male or female incarnations. But as a rule these qualities are mutually fruitful and complementary.

Other qualities in the human being are also complementary in a similar way, for example, the two qualities of soul we will call the capacity for love and inner strength.

Self-reliance, harmonious inner life, a feeling of our own sure foundations, the inner assurance that we know what we have to do in life—in this connection too the working of karma alternates in the different incarnations. The outstanding stamp of the one personality is loving devotion to his environment, forgetfulness of self, surrender to what is around him. Such an incarnation will alternate with one in which the individual feels the urge not to lose himself in the outer world but to strengthen himself inwardly, applying this strength to bring about his own progress. This latter urge must not, of course, degenerate into lack of love, any more than the former urge must not degenerate, as it might well do, into a complete loss of one's own self. These two tendencies again belong together. And it must be constantly emphasised that when anthroposophists have the desire to sacrifice themselves, such desire is not enough. Many people would like to sacrifice themselves all the time—they feel happy in so doing—but before anyone can make a sacrifice of real value to the world he must have the strength required for it. A man must first be something before he can usefully sacrifice himself; otherwise the sacrifice of egohood is not of much value. Moreover in a certain respect a kind of egoism—although it is repressed—a kind of laziness, is present when a man makes no effort to develop, to persevere in his strivings, so that what he can achieve is of real value.

It might seem—but please do not misunderstand this—as though we were preaching lovelessness. The outer world is very prone to-day to reproach anthroposophists by saying: You aim at perfecting your own souls, you strive for the progress of your own souls. You become egoists!—It must be admitted that many capricious fancies, many failings and errors may arise in men's endeavours towards perfection. What very often appears to be the principle of development adopted among anthroposophists does not by any means always call for admiration. Behind this striving there is often a great deal of hidden egoism.

On the other side it must be emphasised that we are living in an epoch of civilisation when devoted willingness for sacrifice only too often goes to waste. Although lack of love is in evidence everywhere, there is also an enormous waste of love and willingness for sacrifice. This must not be misunderstood; but it should be realised that love, if it is not accompanied by wisdom in the conduct of life, by wise insight into the existing conditions, can be very misplaced and therefore harmful rather than beneficial. We are living in the age when it is necessary for something that can help the soul to progress—again something that Anthroposophy can bring—to penetrate into the souls of a large number of human beings, inwardly enriching and fertilising them. For the sake of the next incarnation and also for the sake of their activity between death and a new birth, men must be capable of performing deeds that are not based merely upon old customs, but are in essence new. These things must be regarded with great earnestness for it must be established that Anthroposophy has a mission, that it is like a seed of culture that must grow and come to flower in the future. But it can best be seen how this is fulfilled in life if we bear in mind karmic connections such as those between faith and reason, love and self-reliance.

A man who in accordance with the view prevailing nowadays is convinced that when he has passed through the Gate of Death the only prospect is that of an extra-terrestrial eternity somewhere beyond this world, will never be able truly to assess the soul's progress, for he will say to himself: If indeed there is such a thing as progress you cannot achieve it, for your existence is only transitory, you are in this world for a short time only and all you can do is to prepare for that other world.

It is a fact that our greatest wisdom in life comes from our failures; we learn from our failures, gather the most wisdom from the very things where we have not been successful. Ask yourselves seriously how often you have the opportunity of repeating a mistake, in exactly the same circumstances as before—you will find that such a situation rarely occurs. And would not life be utterly without purpose if the wisdom we can acquire from our mistakes were to be lost to earthly humanity? Only if we can come back again, if in a new life we can put into effect the experiences gained in earlier lives—only then does life acquire meaning and purpose. In either case it is senseless to strive for real progress in this earthly existence if it is regarded as the only one, and also for an eternity beyond the earth.

And it is particularly senseless for those who think that all existence comes to an end when they have passed through the Gate of Death. What strength, what energy and confidence in life would be gained by men if they knew that they can turn to account in a new life whatever forces are apparently lost to them! Modern culture is as it is because so very little was gathered for it in the previous incarnations of human beings. Truly, souls have become impoverished in the course of their incarnations.—How is this to be explained?

In long past ages, before the Mystery of Golgotha, men were endowed with an ancient clairvoyance and magical forces of will. And it continued to be so on into the Christian era. But in the final stages of this ancient clairvoyance it was only the evil forces, the demonic forces, that came down from the higher worlds. There are many references in the Gospels to demonic natures around Christ Jesus. Human souls had lost their original connection with the Divine-Spiritual forces and beings. And then Christ came to mankind. Human beings who are living at the present time have had perhaps two or three incarnations since then—each according to his karma. The influence exercised by Christianity until now could only have been what it is, because the souls of men were feeble, drained of force. Christianity could not unfold its whole inner power because of the feebleness of human souls. The extent to which this was so can be gauged if a different wave in human civilisation is considered—the wave which in the East led to Buddhism. Buddhism has the conviction of the truth of reincarnation and karma but in such a form that it regards the purpose and task of progress in evolution to consist in leading men away from life as quickly as possible. In the East a wave was astir in which there was no urge for existence. So we see how everything that should inspire men with determination to fulfil the mission of the earth has fallen away from those who belong to the wave of culture that is the bearer of Buddhism. And if Buddhism were to spread widely in the West, this would be a proof that souls of the feeblest type are very numerous, for it is these souls who would become Buddhists. Wherever Buddhism in some form might appear in the West, this would be a proof that the souls in question want to evade the mission of the earth, to escape from it as quickly as they can, being incapable of tackling it.

When Christianity was spreading in the South of Europe and was being adopted by the peoples of the North, the force of instinct in these Northern souls was strong and powerful. They absorbed Christianity, but, to begin with, its external aspects only could be brought into prominence, that is to say, those aspects which render it so important for men to-day to deepen their experience of the Christ Impulse, so that this Christ Impulse may become the inmost power of the soul itself and the soul grow inwardly richer as it lives on towards the future. Human souls have passed through incarnations of weakness, of uncertainty, and, to begin with, Christianity was an external support. But now the epoch has come when souls must become inwardly strong and vigorous. Therefore as time goes on, what the individual does in outer life will be of little consequence. What will be essential is that the soul shall fund its own footing, shall deepen itself, acquire insight into how the inner reality can be inculcated into the outer life, how the earth's mission can be permeated through and through with the consciousness, the strong inner realisation born from conviction of the truths of reincarnation and karma.

Even if no more than a humble beginning is made in the direction of enabling these truths to penetrate into life, this humble beginning is nevertheless of untold significance. The more we learn to judge man according to his inner faculties, to deepen life inwardly, the more we help to bring about what must be the basic character of a future humanity. External life will become increasingly complicated—that cannot be prevented but souls will find their way to one another through a deepened inner life. The individual may engage in this or that outer activity—but it is the inner richness of the soul that in the anthroposophical life will unite individual souls and enable them to work to the end that this anthroposophical life shall flow more and more strongly into external culture. We know that the whole of our outer life is strengthened when the soul discovers its reality in Anthroposophy; individuals pursuing occupations and vocations of every kind in outer life find themselves united. The soul of external cultural life itself is created through what is given us in Anthroposophy: benediction of the external life. To make this benediction possible, consciousness of the great law of karma must first awaken in the soul. The more we advance into the future, the more must the individual soul be able to feel within itself the benediction of the whole of life.

Outer laws and institutions will make life so complicated that men may well lose their bearings altogether. But by realising the truth of the law of karma the knowledge will be born in the soul of what it must do in order to find, from within, its path through the world. This path will best be found when the things of the world are regulated by the inner life of soul. There are certain things which go on quite satisfactorily because everyone follows the impulse that is an unerring guide. An example is that of walking along the street. People are not yet given precise instructions to step aside to one side of the pavement or the other. Yet two people walking towards each other very rarely collide, because they obey an inner instinct. Otherwise everyone would need to have a policeman at his side ordering him to move to the right or left. Certain circles would really like everyone to have a policeman on one side of him and a doctor on the other all the time—but that is not yet in the realm of possibility! Nevertheless progress can best be made in those things where a man is guided by an inner, spontaneous impulse. In the social life this must lead to respect for human beings, respect for the dignity of man. And this can be achieved only if we understand individuals as they can be understood when the law of reincarnation and karma is taken into account. This social life among men can be raised to a higher level only when the significance of this law takes root in the soul. This is shown most clearly of all by concrete observation such as that of the connection between ardent faith and knowledge, between love and self-reliance.

These two lectures have not been given without purpose. The real importance does not lie so much in what is actually said—it could be put in a different way. But what is of prime importance is that those who profess to adhere to Anthroposophy as a cultural movement shall be so thoroughly steeped in the ideas of reincarnation and karma that they realise how life must inevitably become different if every human soul is conscious of these truths. The cultural life of the modern age has taken shape with the exclusion of consciousness of reincarnation and karma. And the all-important factor that will be introduced through Anthroposophy is that these truths will take real hold of life, that they will penetrate culture and in so doing essentially transform it.

Just as a modern man who says that reincarnation and karma are fantastic nonsense, for it can be seen how human beings are born and how they die—something passes out at death but as that cannot be seen there is no need to take account of it just as a man who speaks in this way is related to one who says: What passes away cannot be seen, but this law can be taken into account and those who do so will for the first time find all life's happenings intelligible, will be able to grasp things that are otherwise inexplicable ... so will the culture of to-day be related to the culture of the future, in which the laws, the teachings of reincarnation and karma will be contained. And although these two laws—as thoughts held by humanity in general—have played no part in the development of present-day culture, they will certainly play a very leading part in all cultures of the future!

The anthroposophist must feel and be conscious of the fact that in this way he is helping to bring about the birth of a new culture. This feeling of the enormous significance in life of the ideas of reincarnation and karma can be a bond of union among a group of human beings to-day, no matter what their external circumstances may be. And those who are eventually held together by such a feeling can find their way to one another only through Anthroposophy.

• 1. Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543) became a Church dignitary in Frauenburg. His celebrated astronomical work, De revolutionibus orbiurn coelestium, had been dedicated to Pope Paul III, but was not printed until 1543, in Nurnberg. Although protected, to begin with, by the dedication to the Pope, in 1615 it was put on the Index of books forbidden to Catholics, remaining there until 1822, when the ban was officially lifted by the Vatican on works dealing with the earth's motion and the fixed position of the sun.
• 2. In 1851, at the Pantheon in Paris, Leon Foucault demonstrated the diurnal motion of the earth by the rotation of the plane of oscillation of a freely suspended, long and heavy pendulum, and again the following year by means of his invention the gyroscope.
• 3. This was Franz Maraz, the priest at Neudorll, near Wiener Neustadt. Maraz was a Hungarian, later Canon at Oedenburg, and held high offices.
  
  In his autobiography, The Course of my Life, Rudolf Steiner says of him: “The image of this man was deeply engraved in my soul and throughout my life he has come again and again into my memory.”
• 4. cp. Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). 66

For many years past we have been studying anthroposophical truths, details of anthroposophical knowledge, trying to approach them from different sides and to assimilate them. In the course of the lectures now being given, and those yet to come, it will be well to ask ourselves what Anthroposophy should and can give to the men of our time. We know a good deal of the content of Anthroposophy and we can therefore approach the question with a certain basis of understanding.

We must above all remember that the anthroposophical life, the anthroposophical Movement itself, must be clearly distinguished—in our minds at any rate—from any kind of special organisation, from anything to which the name “Society” might be given. The whole character of modern life will of course make it more and more necessary for those who want to cultivate Anthroposophy to unite in a corporate sense; but this is made necessary more by the character of life outside than by the content or attitude of Anthroposophy itself. Anthroposophy in itself could be made known to the world in the same way as anything else—as chemistry, for instance—and its truths could be accessible just as in the case of the truths of chemistry or mathematics. How an individual assimilates Anthroposophy and makes it a real impulse in his life could then be a matter for the individual himself. A Society or any kind of corporate body for the cultivation of Anthroposophy is made necessary because Anthroposophy as such comes into our epoch as something new, as entirely new knowledge, which must be received into the spiritual life of men. Those who have not entered the sphere of anthroposophical life need a special preparation of their souls and hearts as well as the constitution of soul belonging to the present age. Such preparation can be acquired only through the life and activities in our groups and meetings. There we adapt ourselves to a certain trend of thinking and feeling, so that we realise the significance of matters which people in the outside world who know nothing of Anthroposophy will naturally regard as fantastic nonsense. It might, of course, be argued that Anthroposophy could also be made more widely known through public lectures given to entirely unprepared listeners; but those who belong to our groups in a more intimate sense will realise that the whole tone, the whole manner of delivering a lecture to an unprepared public must necessarily be different from that of a lecture given to those who through an inner urge and through their whole attitude, are able to take seriously what the general public would not yet be able to accept. Quite certainly this state of things will not improve in the immediate future—on the contrary, the opposition will become stronger and stronger. Opposition to Anthroposophy in every domain will increase in the outside world, just because it is in the highest degree necessary for our age, and because what is the most essential at any particular time always encounters the strongest resistance.

It may be asked: Why is this so? Why do human hearts resist so vehemently just what is most needed in their epoch? An anthroposophist should be able to understand this, but it is too complicated a matter to be made even remotely clear to an unprepared public.

The student of Anthroposophy knows of the existence of Luciferic forces, of Luciferic beings who have lagged behind the general process of evolution. They work through the hearts and souls of men and it is to their greatest advantage to launch their fiercest attacks at times when, in reality, there is the strongest urge towards the spiritual life. Because the opposition of the human heart against the progressive impulse in evolution originates from the Luciferic beings, and because these beings will launch their attacks when as it were they already have men by the throat, the resistance of human hearts will inevitably be strongest at such times. Hence we shall understand that the very reason why the most important truths for humanity have lived on from earlier times is that the strongest opposition had to be contended with. Anything that differs only slightly from what is customary in the world will rarely encounter fierce opposition; but what comes into the world because humanity has long been thirsting for but has not received it, will evoke violent attacks from the Luciferic forces. Therefore a “Society” is really nothing more than a rampart against this understandable attitude of the outside world. [1] Some form of association is necessary within the framework of which these things can be presented, with the feeling that in those to whom one speaks or with whom one is in contact there will be a certain measure of understanding, whereas others who have no link with such an association are oblivious of it all.

Everyone believes that what is given out in public is his own concern and that he has to pass judgment upon it; he is instigated, of course, by the Luciferic forces. From this we realise that it is indeed necessary to promulgate Anthroposophy and that Anthroposophy is bringing something essential into our age, something that is longed for by the present thirst and hunger for spiritual nourishment and—whatever the circumstances—will come in some form or other; for the Spiritual Powers who have dedicated themselves to the goals of evolution see to it that this shall happen.

We can therefore ask: What are the most important truths that should be implanted in humanity at the present time through Anthroposophy? Those for which there is the most intense thirst are the most essential. The answer to such a question is one that can very easily be misunderstood. For this reason it is necessary, to begin with, to make a distinction in our minds between Anthroposophy as such and the Anthroposophical Society. The mission of Anthroposophy is to bring new truths, new knowledge, to humanity, but a society can never—least of all in our age—be pledged to any particular tenets. It would be utterly senseless to ask: “What do you anthroposophists believe?” It is senseless to imagine that an “anthroposophist” means a person who belongs to the Anthroposophical Society, for that would be to assume that a whole society holds a common conviction, a common dogma. And that cannot be. The moment a whole society, according to its statutes, were pledged to a common dogma, it would cease to be a society and begin to be a sect. Here is the boundary where a society ceases to be one in the true sense of the word. The moment a man is pledged to hold a belief exacted by a society, we have to do with pure sectarianism. Therefore a society dedicated to the principles described in these lectures can be a society only from the aspect that it is under the right and natural spiritual impulse. It may be asked: “Who are the people who come together to hear something about Anthroposophy?” To this we may reply: “Those who have an urge to hear about spiritual things.” This urge has nothing dogmatic about it. For if a person is seeking for something without saying, “I shall find this or that,” but is really seeking, this is the common element which a society that does not wish to become a sect must contain. The question: What does Anthroposophy as such bring to humanity? is quite independent of this. Our reply must be: Anthroposophy as such brings to humanity something that is similar to all the great spiritual truths that have been brought to humanity, only its effect upon the human soul is more profound, more significant.

Among the subjects we have been studying in our lectures there are many that might be considered less distinctive from the point of view of something entirely new being presented to modern humanity. Nevertheless they are fundamental truths which do indeed penetrate into humanity as something new. We need not look very far to find this new element. It lies in the two truths which really belong to the most fundamental of all and bring increasing conviction to the human soul: these are the two truths of reincarnation and karma. It may be said that the first thing a really serious anthroposophist discovers along his path is that knowledge of reincarnation and karma is essential. It cannot, for example, be said that in Western culture, certain truths—such as the possibility of becoming conscious of higher worlds—present themselves through Anthroposophy as something fundamentally new. Anyone who has some knowledge of the development of Western thought knows of mystics such as Jacob Boehme or Swedenborg, or the whole Jacob Boehme school, and he knows too—although there has been much argument to the contrary—that it has always been considered possible for a man to rise from the ordinary sense-world to higher worlds. This, then, is not the element that is fundamentally new. And the same applies to other matters. Even when we are speaking of what is absolutely fundamental in evolution, for example, the subject of Christ, this is not the salient point as regards the Anthroposophical Movement as such; the essential point is the form which the subject of Christ assumes when reincarnation and karma are received as truths into the hearts of men. The light thrown upon the subject of Christ by the truths of reincarnation and karma—that is the essential point.

The West has been profoundly concerned with the subject of Christ. We need only be reminded of men in the days of the Gnosis, and of the time when esoteric Christianity was deepened by those who gathered under the sign of the Grail or of the Rose Cross. This, then, is not the fundamental question. It becomes fundamental and of essential significance for Western minds, for knowledge and for the needs of the religious life only through the truths of reincarnation and karma; so that those whose mental horizons have been widened by the knowledge of these truths necessarily expect new illumination to be shed on old problems. With regard to the knowledge of reincarnation and karma, however, all that can be said is that tentative indications are to be found in Western literature, for example, at the time of Lessing, who speaks of the subject in his essay, The Education of the Human Race. There are also other examples of how this question has dawned upon minds of a certain profundity. But for the truths of reincarnation and karma to become an integral part of human consciousness, assimilated by the hearts and souls of men, as in Anthroposophy—this is something that could not really happen until our own time. Therefore it can be said that the relation of a man of the modern age to Anthroposophy is characterised by the fact that certain antecedents have enabled reincarnation and karma to become matters of knowledge to him. That is the essential point. Everything else follows more or less as a matter of course if a man is able to acquire the right insight into the truths of reincarnation and karma.

In considering this aspect of the subject, we must also realise what it will mean for Western humanity and for humanity in general when reincarnation and karma become matters of knowledge which take their place in everyday life as other truths have done. In the near future, reincarnation and karma must pass into the consciousness of men far more deeply than was the case, for example, with the Copernican view of the universe. We need only remind ourselves of how rapidly this theory penetrated into the human mind. Only a comparatively short period in world-history has elapsed since the Copernican view of the universe first became generally known, yet it is now taught even in the elementary schools. As far as the effect upon the human soul is concerned, however, there is an essential difference between Copernicanism and the anthroposophical world-conception, in so far as the latter is based on the fundamental principles of reincarnation and karma. To be able to characterise the difference, one really needs a group of anthroposophists, of people who come together with good will to understand, for things would have to be said that would cause too great a shock to those outside the anthroposophical Movement.

Why is it that the Copernican view of the universe has been accepted so readily? Those who have heard me speak of it or of modern natural science in general know well that I pass no derogatory judgment on the modern scientific mode of thinking. Therefore in characterising the difference I shall not be misinterpreted when I say that for the acceptance of this world-picture, limited as it is to the presentation of external relationships and conditions of space, an epoch of superficiality was necessary! The reason why the Copernican theory took root so rapidly is none other than that for a certain period of time men became superficial. Superficiality was essential for the adoption of Copernicanism. Depth of soul—that is to say, the exact opposite—will be necessary for acceptance of the truths of Anthroposophy, especially of the fundamental truths of reincarnation and karma. If, therefore, the conviction grows in us to-day that these truths must become a much stronger and more widespread influence in the life of mankind, we must realise at the same time that we are standing at the boundary between two epochs: one, the epoch of superficiality, and the other, the epoch when the human soul and human heart must be inwardly deepened. This is what must be inscribed in our very souls if we are to be fully conscious of what Anthroposophy has to bring to humanity at the present time. And then comes the question: What form will life take under the influence of the knowledge of reincarnation and karma?

Here we must consider what it really means for the human soul and heart to recognise that reincarnation and karma are truths? What does it mean for the whole of man's consciousness, for his whole life of feeling and thinking? As anyone who reflects about these things can realise, it means no less than that through knowledge the Self of man grows beyond certain limits to which knowledge is otherwise exposed. In past times it was sharply emphasised that man could know and recognise only what lies between birth and death, that at most he could look up with faith to one who penetrates into a spiritual world as a knower. Such conviction grew with increasing strength. But this is not of very great significance when regarded merely from the aspect of knowledge; the subject becomes really significant when we pass from the aspect of knowledge to the moral aspect. It is then that the whole greatness and significance of the ideas of reincarnation and karma are revealed. A very great deal could be said in confirmation of this but we will confine ourselves to one aspect.

Think of the people belonging to earlier epochs of Western civilisation and the great majority of those living at the present time. Although they still cling to the belief that the being of man remains intact when he passes through the Gate of Death, it is imagined—because no thought is given to reincarnation and karma—that man's spiritual life after death is entirely separate from earthly existence. Apart from exceptional phenomena to which credence is given by those with spiritualistic leanings, when the dead are alleged to be working into this world, the current idea is that whatever takes place when a man has passed through the Gate of Death—be it punishment or reward—is remote from the earth as such, and that the further course of his life lies in a quite different sphere, a sphere beyond the earth.

Knowledge of reincarnation and karma changes this idea entirely. What is contained in the soul of a man who has passed through the Gate of Death has significance not only for a sphere beyond the earth, but the future of the earth itself depends upon what his life has been between birth and death. The earth will have the outer configuration that is imparted by the men who have lived upon it. The whole future configuration of the planet, as well as the social life of men in the future, depends upon how men have lived in their earlier incarnations. That is the moral element in the ideas of reincarnation and karma. A man who has assimilated these ideas knows: According to what I was in life, I shall have an effect upon everything that takes place in the future, upon the whole civilisation of the future! Something that up to now has been present in a limited degree only—the feeling of responsibility—is extended beyond the bounds of birth and death by knowledge of reincarnation and karma. The feeling of responsibility is intensified, imbued with the deep moral consequences of these ideas. A man who does not believe in them may say: “When I have passed through the Gate of Death I shall be punished or rewarded for what I have done here; I shall experience the consequences of this existence in another world; that other world, however, is ruled over by spiritual Powers of some kind or other, and they will prevent what I have within me from causing too much harm to the world as a whole.” A man who realises that the ideas of reincarnation and karma are based upon reality will no longer speak like this, for he knows that men's lives will be shaped according to what they have been in earlier incarnations.

The important point is that the fundamental ideas of the anthroposophical conception of the world will pass over into the souls and hearts of men and arise as moral impulses undreamed of in the past times. The feeling of responsibility will be intensified to a degree that was formerly impossible, and other moral insights will necessarily follow. As human beings learning to live under the influence of the ideas of reincarnation and karma we shall come to know that our life cannot be assessed on the basis of what has taken expression in one life between birth and death, but that a period extending over many lives must be taken into account.

When we encounter another human being with the attitude that has prevailed hitherto, we feel sympathy or antipathy towards him, strong or moderate affection, and the like. The whole attitude of one man to another in the present age is in reality the outcome of the view that life on the earth is limited to the one period between birth and death. We live as we should after all be bound to live if it were true that man is on the earth only once. Our attitude to parents, brothers, sisters, friends, is coloured by the belief that we have only one life on the earth.

A vast transformation will take place in life when the ideas of reincarnation and karma are no longer theories held by a few people as is the case nowadays—for they are still largely matters of theory. It can truly be said that there are numbers of people to-day who believe in reincarnation and karma; but they act as if there were no such realities, as though life were actually confined to the one period between birth and death. Nor can it be otherwise, for habits change less quickly than ideas. Only when we introduce into our lives right and concrete ideas of reincarnation and karma, only then shall we find how life can be fertilised by them.

As human beings we begin life in the circle of our parents, brothers and sisters, and other relatives; in our early years those around us are there owing to natural factors such as blood-relationship, proximity and the like. Then, as we grow up, we see how these circles expand, how we enter into quite different connections with human beings, connections that are no longer dependent on blood-relationship. These things must be seen in the light of karma and then they will illumine life in an entirely new way. Karma becomes of significance only when we grasp it as a concrete factor, when we apply to life itself the facts brought to light by spiritual-scientific investigation. These facts can, of course, be discovered only by such investigation, but then they can be applied to life.

An important question in connection with karma is the following: How does it come about that at the beginning of the present life, for example, we are drawn to certain others through blood-relationship? Spiritual-scientific investigation of this question discovers that as a rule—for although specific facts come to light there are countless exceptions—the human beings with whom we came to be associated involuntarily at the beginning of our life, were close to us in a former life—in most cases the immediately preceding one—in middle life, in the thirties; then we chose them voluntarily in some way, drawn to them perhaps by our hearts. It would be quite erroneous to think that the people around us at the beginning of our present life are those with whom we were also together at the beginning of a former life. Not at the beginning, not at the end, but in the middle of one life we were associated, by our own choosing, with those who are now our blood-relations. It is frequently the case that a marriage partner whom someone has chosen deliberately will be related to him in the next life as father or mother, or brother or sister. Spiritual-scientific investigation shows that speculative assumptions are generally incorrect and as a rule contradicted by the actual facts.

When we consider the particular case just mentioned and try to grasp it as a finding of the unbiased investigations of Spiritual Science, our whole relation to life is widened. In the course of Western civilisation things have reached the point where it is hardly possible for a man to do otherwise than speak of ‘chance’ when thinking about his connection with those who are his blood-relations. He speaks of chance and in many respects believes in it. How indeed could he believe in anything else if life is thought to be limited to one period only between birth and death? As far as the one life is concerned a man will of course admit that he is responsible for the consequences of what he himself has brought about. But when he leads the Self beyond what happens between birth and death, when he feels this Self to be connected with other men of another incarnation, he feels responsible in the same way as he does for his own deeds in this life.

The general view that a man has himself karmically chosen his parents is not of any special significance, but we gain an idea of this ‘choosing’ which can actually be confirmed by other experiences of life when we realise that those whom we have chosen so unconsciously now, were chosen by us in a former life at an age when we were more conscious than at any other, when we were fully mature.

This idea may be unpalatable to some people to-day but it is true nevertheless. If a person is not satisfied with his kith and kin he will eventually come to know that he himself laid the basis of this dissatisfaction and that he must therefore provide differently for the next incarnation; and then the ideas of reincarnation and karma will become really fruitful in his life. The point is that these ideas are not there for the sake of satisfying curiosity or the like, but for the sake of our progress. When we know how family connections are formed, the ideas of reincarnation and karma will widen and enhance our feeling of responsibility.

The forces which bring down an individual human being into a family must obviously be strong. But they cannot be strong in the individual now incarnated, for they cannot have much to do with the world into which he has actually descended. Is it not comprehensible that the forces working in the deepest depths of the soul must stem from the past life when he himself brought about the connections by the strong impulse of friendship, of ‘conscious love,’ if it may be called so? Conscious forces prevailing in one life work as unconscious forces in the next. What happens more or less unconsciously is explained by this thought. It is most important, of course, that the facts should not be clouded by illusions; moreover the findings of genuine investigation almost invariably upset speculations. The logic of the facts cannot be discovered until afterwards and nobody should allow himself to be guided by speculation, for that will never bring him to the right vantage-point. He will always arrive at a point of view that is characteristic of a conversation of which I have already spoken. In a town in South Germany a theologian once said to me: “I have read your books and have realised that they are entirely logical; so the thought has occurred to me that because they are so logical their author may perhaps have arrived at their content through pure logic.” So if I had taken pains to write a little less logically I should presumably have gone up in the estimation of that theologian, because he would then have realised that the facts presented were not discovered through pure logic! Anyone, however, who studies the writings thoroughly will perceive that the contents were put into the form of logic afterwards but were not discovered through logic. I at any rate could have done no such thing, of that I assure you! Perhaps others might have been capable of it.

Regarded in this way, these things bring home to us the deep significance of the idea that the most important impulses proceeding from Anthroposophy must necessarily be moral impulses. Emphasis has been laid to-day upon the feeling of responsibility. In the same way we might speak of love, of compassion and the like, all of which present different aspects in the light of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. That is why through the years it has been considered of such importance, even in public lectures, always to relate Anthroposophy to life, to the most immediate phenomena of life. We have spoken of “The Mission of Anger,” of “Conscience,” of “Prayer,”² of the different ages in the life of the human being, approaching all these things in the light in which they must be approached if we assume that the ideas of reincarnation and karma are true. The transforming power of these ideas in life has thus been brought home to us. In reality the main part of our studies has been to consider the effect of these fundamental ideas upon life. Even if it is not always possible in abstract words to convey the significance of reincarnation and karma for the heart, for conscience, for the character, for prayer, in such a way that we are able to say: “If we accept the ideas of reincarnation and karma, it follows that ...”—nevertheless all our studies are illumined by them. The important thing for the immediate future is that everything—not only the science of the soul but the other sciences too—shall be influenced by these ideas.

If you study a lecture such as the last public one on “Death in Man, Animal, and Plant,” you will see that it was a matter of showing how men will learn to think of death in plant, animal and man when they discern in themselves that which stretches beyond the single human life. It was made clear that the Self is different in each case. In man there is an individual Ego, in the animal there is a group-soul, and in the plant we have to do with part of the whole planetary soul. In the case of the plant, what we see outwardly as dying and budding is to be conceived of simply as a process of falling asleep and waking. In the animal there is again a difference; here we find a certain degree of resemblance to man inasmuch as in a single incarnation a self comes into some kind of evidence. But in man alone, who himself brings about his incarnations, we realise that death is the guarantee of immortality and that the word ‘death’ can be used in this sense only in the case of man. In using the word ‘death’ in the general sense, therefore, it must be emphasised that dying has a different signification according to whether we are speaking of man, or animal, or plant.

When the anthroposophist is able to accept the ideas of reincarnation and karma in the form in which we must present them, as distinct from earlier conceptions such as are found, for example, in Buddhism, his studies will lead him quite naturally to other things. That is why our work has been mainly devoted to studying what effect the ideas of reincarnation and karma can have upon the whole of human life. In this connection it is obvious that the work of any anthroposophical association or society must be in conformity with the mission of Anthroposophy. It is therefore understandable that when we speak about questions which may seem to those outside Anthroposophy to be the most important, the fundamental truths are the basis upon which we speak of matters closely concerning every Western soul. It is quite conceivable that a man might accept from Anthroposophy those things that have been described to-day as fundamentally new and not concern himself at all with any of the differences between the various religions, for the Science of Comparative Religion is by no means an essential feature of modern Spiritual Science. A great deal of research is devoted to the subject of Comparative Religion to-day and in comparison with it the studies pursued in certain societies connected with Spiritual Science are by no means the more profound. The point of real importance is that in Anthroposophy all these things shall be illumined by the ideas of reincarnation and karma.

In another connection still the feeling of responsibility will be essentially enhanced under the influence of these ideas. If we consider what has been said to-day about blood-relationship and companions once freely chosen by ourselves, a certain antithesis comes into evidence: What in one life is the most inward and intimate impulse, is in the next life the most outwardly manifest. When in one incarnation our deepest feelings of affection go out to certain human beings, we are preparing an outer relationship for another incarnation—a blood-relationship, maybe.

The same principle applies in another sphere. The way in which we think about some matter that may seem to us devoid of reality in one incarnation will be the most determinative factor in the impulses of the next; the quality of our thinking, whether we approach a truth lightly or try to verify it by every means at our command, whether we have a sense for truth or a tendency to fanaticism—all this, as the result of assimilating the ideas of reincarnation and karma, will have a bearing upon our evolution. What is hidden within our being in the present incarnation will be most in evidence in the next. A person who tells many untruths or is inclined to take things superficially will be a thoughtless character in the next or a later incarnation; for what we think, how we think, what attitude we have to truth, in other words what we are inwardly in this incarnation, will be the standard of our conduct in the next. If, for example, in this incarnation, we too hastily form a derogatory judgment of someone who if really put to the test might prove to be a good or even a moderately good man, and we carry this thought through life, we shall become unbearable, quarrelsome people in the next incarnation. Here is another illustration of the importance of widening and intensifying the moral element in the soul.

It is very important that special attention should be paid to these things and that we should realise the significance of taking into our very soul what is really new, together with everything else that with the ideas of reincarnation and karma penetrates as a revitalising impulse into the spiritual development of the present age . . .

My aim has been to bring home to you the importance of reflecting upon what constitutes the fundamentally new element in Anthroposophy. This of course does not mean that an anthroposophical society is one that believes in reincarnation and karma. It means that just as an age was once ready to receive the Copernican theory of the universe, so is our own age ready for the ideas of reincarnation and karma to be brought into the general consciousness of humanity. And what is destined to happen in the course of evolution will happen, no matter what powers rise up against it. When reincarnation and karma are truly understood, everything else follows of itself in the light of these truths.

It is certainly useful to have considered the fundamental distinction between those who are interested in Anthroposophy and those who oppose it. The distinction does not really lie in the acceptance of a higher world, but in the way thoughts and conceptions change in the light of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. And so to-day we have been studying something that may be regarded as the essential kernel of anthroposophical thought.

• 2. See: Metamorphoses of the Soul. Vol 1 and Metamorphoses of the Soul. Vol 2

When our friends here gave me a warm invitation to come to them, they requested me to speak about the spiritual beings we find in the realms of nature and in the heavenly bodies.

Our theme will compel us to touch upon a realm that is very far removed from all the knowledge given to man today by the external world, the intellectual world. From the very beginning we shall have to allude to a domain, the reality of which is denied by the external world of today. I shall only take for granted one thing, namely, that as a result of the studies you have hitherto made in spiritual science, you meet me with a feeling and perception for the spiritual world; in respect to the manner in which we shall name things, we shall come to a mutual understanding in the course of the lectures. All the rest will, in certain respects, come of itself when, as time goes on, we acquire an understanding born of feeling and of perception for the fact that behind our sense world, behind the world which we as men experience, there lies a world of spirit—a spiritual world; and that just as we penetrate into the physical world through regarding it not only as a great unity, but as specified into individual plants, animals, minerals, peoples, persons—so can we specify the spiritual world into different classes of individual spiritual beings. So that in spiritual science we do not merely speak of a spiritual world, but of quite definite beings and forces standing behind our physical world.

What then do we include in the physical world? First let us be clear about that. As belonging to the physical world we reckon all that we can perceive with our senses, see with our eyes, hear with our ears, all that our hands can grasp. Further, we reckon as belonging to the physical world all that we can encompass with our thoughts in so far as these thoughts refer to external perception, to that which the physical world can say to us. In the physical world we must also include all that we, as human beings, do within it. It might easily make us pause and reflect when it is said that all that we, as human beings do in the physical world forms part of that world, for we must admit that when we act in the physical world, we bring down the spiritual into that world. People do not act merely according to the suggestions of physical impulses and passions, but also according to moral principles; our conduct, our actions, are influenced by morals. Certainly when we act morally, spiritual impulses play a part in our actions; but the field of action in which we act morally is, nevertheless, the physical world. Just as in our moral actions there is an interplay of spiritual impulses, even so do spiritual impulses permeate us through colors, sounds, warmth, and cold and through all sense impressions. The spiritual is in a sense always hidden from external perception, from that which external man knows and can do. It is the characteristic of the spiritual, that man can only recognize it when he takes the trouble, at least to a small extent, to become other than he has been hitherto.

We work together in our groups and gatherings; not only do we hear there certain truths which tell us that there are various worlds—that man consists of various principles or bodies, or whatever we like to call them, but by allowing all this to influence us, although we may not always notice it, our soul will gradually change to something different, even without our going through an esoteric development. What we learn through spiritual science makes our soul different from what it was before. Compare your feelings after you have taken part in the spiritual life of a working group for a few years, the way in which you feel and think, with the thoughts and feelings you had before, or with the way in which people think and feel who are not interested in spiritual science. Spiritual science does not merely signify the acquisition of knowledge; it signifies most pre-eminently an education, a self-education of our souls. We make ourselves different; we have other interests. When a man imbues himself with spiritual science, the habits of attention for this or for that subject which he developed during previous years, alter. What interested him before, interests him no longer; that which had no interest for him previously, now begins to interest him in the highest degree. One ought not simply to say that only a person who has gone through esoteric development can attain to a connection with the spiritual world; esotericism does not begin with occult development. The moment we make any link with spiritual science with our whole heart, esotericism has already begun; our souls begin at once to be transformed. There then begins in us something resembling what would arise, let us say, in a being who had previously only been able to see light and darkness, and who then through a special and different organisation of the eyes, begins to see colors. The whole world would appear different to such a being. We need only observe it, we need only realise it, and we shall soon see that the whole world begins to have a different aspect when we have for a time gone through the self-education we can get in a spiritual science circle. This self-education to a quite definite feeling with regard to the spiritual world, this self-education to a perception of what lies behind the physical facts is a fruit of the spiritual scientific movement in the world, and is the most important part of spiritual understanding. We should not believe that we can acquire a spiritual understanding by mere sentimentality, by simply repeating continually that we wish to permeate all our feelings with love. Other people, if they are good, wish to do that too; this would only be giving way to a sort of pride. Rather should we make it clear to ourselves how we can educate our feelings by letting the knowledge of the facts of a higher world influence us, and transforming our souls by means of this knowledge. This special manner of training the soul to a feeling for a higher world is what makes the spiritual scientist. Above all we need this understanding if we intend to speak about the things which are to be spoken about in this course of lectures.

He who, with trained occult sight, is able to see behind the physical facts, finds at once behind all that is spread out as color, sound, as warmth, cold, all that is embodied in the laws of nature—beings, which are not revealed to the external senses, to the external intellect, but which lie behind the physical world. Then, as he penetrates further and further, he discovers, so to say, worlds with beings of an ever higher order. If we wish to acquire an understanding of all that lies behind our sense-world, then, in accordance with the special task that has been ascribed to me here, we must take as our real starting-point what we encounter first of all behind our sense-world, as soon as we raise the very first veil which our sense perception spreads over spiritual happenings. As a matter of fact, the world which reveals itself to the trained occult vision as the one lying next to us, presents the greatest surprise to the present-day understanding, to the present power of comprehension. I am speaking to those who have to some extent accepted spiritual science, consequently I may take it for granted that you know that behind that which meets us externally as the human being, behind what we see with our eyes, touch with our hands, and grasp with our understanding in ordinary anatomy or physiology concerning man—behind what we call the physical human body, we recognize a super-sensible human principle coming immediately next to it. This first super-sensible principle of man we call the etheric, or life-body.

We will not today speak of still higher principles of human nature, but will only be clear that occult sight is able to look behind the physical body and to find there the etheric or life-body. Now occult sight can do something similar with regard to Nature around us. Just as we can investigate man occultly to see if there is not something more than his physical body, and then find the etheric body—so we can look with occult vision at external nature in her colors, forms, sounds, and kingdoms—in the mineral, the plant, the animal and the human kingdoms, in so far as they meet us physically. We then find that just as behind the physical body of man there is a life-body, so we can also find a sort of etheric or life-body behind the whole of physical nature. Only there is an immense difference between the etheric body of all physical nature and that of man. When occult vision is directed to the etheric or life-body of man, it is seen as unity, as a connected structure, as one connected form or figure. When the occult vision penetrates all that external nature presents as color, form, mineral, plant, or animal structures, it is discovered that in physical nature the etheric body is a plurality—something infinitely multiform. That is the great difference; there is a single unitary being as etheric or life-body in man—while there are many varied and differentiated beings behind physical nature.

Now I must show you in what way we arrive at such an assumption as that just made, namely that there is an etheric or life-body—strictly speaking an etheric or life-world—a plurality, a multiplicity of differentiated beings, behind our physical nature. To express how we can arrive at this, I can clothe it in simple words:, we are more and more able to recognize the etheric or life-world behind physical nature when we begin to have a moral perception of the world lying around us. What is meant by perceiving the whole world morally? What does this imply? First of all, looking away from the earth, if we direct our gaze into the ranges of cosmic space, we are met by the blue sky. Suppose we do this on a day in which no cloud, not even the faintest silver-white cloudlet breaks the azure space of heaven. We look upwards into this blue heaven spread out above us—whether we recognize it in the physical sense as something real or not, does not signify; the point is the impression that this wide stretch of the blue heavens makes upon us. Suppose that we can yield ourselves up to this blue of the sky, and that we do this with intensity and for a long, long time; that we can so do it that we forget all else that we know in life and all that is around us in life. Suppose that we are able for one moment to forget all the external impressions, all our memories, all the cares and troubles of life, and can yield ourselves completely to the single impression of the blue heavens. What I am now saying to you, can be experienced by every human soul if only it will fulfil these necessary conditions; what I am telling you can be a common human experience. Suppose a human soul gazes in this way at nothing but the blue of the sky. A certain moment then comes, a moment in which the blue sky ceases to be blue—in which we no longer see anything which can in human language be called blue. If at that moment when the blue to us ceases to be blue, we turn our attention to our own soul, we shall notice quite a special mood in it. The blue disappears, and as it were, an infinity arises before us, and in this infinity a quite definite mood in our soul; a quite definite feeling, a quite definite perception pours itself into the emptiness which arises where the blue had been before. If we would give a name to this soul perception, to that which would soar out there into infinite distances, there is only one word for it; it is a devout feeling in our soul, a feeling of pious devotion to infinity. All the religious feelings in the evolution of humanity have fundamentally a nuance which contains within it what I have here called a pious devotion; the impression of the blue vault of the heavens which stretches above us has called up a religious feeling, a moral perception. When within our souls the blue has disappeared, a moral perception of the external world springs to life.

Let us now reflect upon another feeling by means of which we can in another way attune ourselves in moral harmony with external nature. When the trees are bursting into leaf and the meadows are filled with green, let us fix our gaze upon the green which in the most varied manner covers the earth or meets us in the trees; and again we will do this in such a way as to forget all the external impressions which can affect our souls, and simply devote ourselves to that which in external nature meets us as green. If once more we are so circumstanced that we can yield ourselves to that which springs forth as the reality of green, we can carry this so far that the green disappears for us, in the same way as previously the blue as blue disappeared. Here again we cannot say, “a color is spread out before our sight,” but (and I remark expressly that I am telling you of things that everyone can experience for himself if he fulfils the requisite conditions) the soul has instead a peculiar feeling, which can be thus expressed: “I now understand what I experience when I think creatively, when a thought springs up in me, when an idea strikes me: I understand this now for the first time, I can only learn this from the bursting forth of the green all around me. I begin to understand the inmost parts of my soul through external nature when the outer natural impression has disappeared and in its place a moral impression is left. The green of the plant tells me how I ought to feel within myself, when my soul is blessed with the power to think thoughts, to cherish ideas.” Here again an external impression of nature is transmuted into a moral feeling.

Or again we may look at a wide stretch of white snow. In the same way as in the description just given of the blue of the sky and the green of earth's robe of vegetation, so this too can set free within us a moral feeling for all that we call the phenomenon of matter in the world. And if, in contemplation of the white snow mantle, we can forget everything else, and experience the whiteness, and then allow it to disappear, we obtain an understanding of that which fills the earth as substance, as matter. We then feel matter living and weaving in the world. And just as one can transform all external sight-impressions into moral perceptions, so too can one transform impressions of sound into moral perceptions. Suppose we listen to a tone and then to its octave, and so attune our souls to this dual sound of a tonic note and its octave that we forget all the rest, eliminate all the rest and completely yield ourselves to these tones, it comes about at last that, instead of hearing these dual tones, our attention is directed from these and we no longer hear them. Then again we find that in our soul a moral feeling is set free. We begin then to have a spiritual understanding of what we experience when a wish lives within us that tries to lead us to something, and then our reason influences our wish. The concord of wish and reason, of thought and desire, as they live in the human soul, is perceived in the tone and its octave.

In like manner we might let the most varied sense perceptions work upon us; we could in this way let all that we perceive in nature through our senses disappear, as it were, so that this sense-veil is removed; then moral perceptions of sympathy and antipathy would arise everywhere. If we accustom ourselves in this way to eliminate all that we see with our eyes, or hear with our ears, or that our hands grasp, or that our understanding (which is connected with the brain) comprehends—if we eliminate all that, and accustom ourselves, nevertheless, to stand before the world, then there works within us something deeper than the power of vision of our eyes, or the power of hearing with our ears, or the intellectual power of our brain-thinking; we then confront a deeper being of the external world. Then the immensity of Infinity so works upon us that we become imbued with a religious mood. Then does the green mantle of plants so work upon us that we feel and perceive in our inner being something spiritually bursting forth into bloom. Then does the white robe of snow so work upon us that by it we gain an understanding of what matter, of what substance is in the world; we grasp the world through something deeper within us than we had hitherto brought into play. And therefore in this way we come into touch with something deeper in the world itself. Then, as it were, the external veil of nature is drawn aside, and we enter a world which lies behind this external veil. Just as when we look behind the physical body of man we come to the etheric or life-body, so in this way we come into a region in which, gradually, manifold beings disclose themselves—those beings which live and work behind the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the animal kingdom. The etheric world gradually appears before us, differentiated in its details.

In Occult Science, that which thus gradually appears before man in the way described, has always been called the Elemental World; and those spiritual beings which we meet with there, and of which we have spoken, are the Elemental Spirits that lie hidden behind all that constitutes the physical-sense-perceptible. I have already said that whereas the etheric body of man is a unity, that which we perceive as the etheric world of nature is a plurality, a multiplicity. How then can we, since what we perceive is something quite new, find it possible to describe something of what gradually impresses itself upon us from behind external nature? Well, we can do so, if by way of comparison, we make a connecting link with what is known. In the whole multiplicity that lies behind the physical world, we first find beings which present self-enclosed pictures to occult vision. In order to characterize what we first of all find there I must refer to something already known. We perceive self-enclosed pictures, beings with definite outline, of which we can say that they can be described according to their form or shape. These beings are one class of those which we first of all find behind the physical-sense world. A second class of beings which we find there, we can only describe if we look away from that which shows itself in set form, with a set figure, and employ the word metamorphosis—transformation. That is the second phenomenon that presents itself to occult vision. Beings that have definite forms belong to the one class; beings which actually change their shape every moment, which, as soon as we meet them and think we have grasped them, immediately change into something else, so that we can only follow them if we make our souls mobile and receptive—belong to this second class. Occult vision actually only finds the first class of beings, which have quite a definite form, when (starting from such conditions as have already been described), it penetrates into the depths of the earth.

I have said that we must allow all that works on us in the external world to arouse a moral effect, such as has been described. We have brought forward by way of example, how one can raise the blue of the heavens, the green of the plants, the whiteness of the snow., into moral impressions. Let us now suppose that we penetrate into the inner part of the earth. When, let us say, we associate with miners, we reach the inner portion of the earth, at any rate we enter regions in which we cannot at first so school our eyes that our vision is transformed into a moral impression. But in our feeling we notice warmth, differentiated degrees of warmth. We must first feel this—that must be the physical impression of nature when we plunge into the realms of the earthly. If we keep in view these differences of warmth, these alternations of temperature, and all that otherwise works on our senses because we are underground, if we allow all this to work upon us, then thus through penetrating into the inner part of the earth, and feeling ourselves united with what is active there, we go through a definite experience. If we then leave out of count everything that produces an impression, if we exert ourselves while down there to feel nothing, not even the differences of warmth which were only for us a preparatory stage, if we try to see nothing, to hear nothing, but to let the impression so affect us that something moral issues from our soul—then there arises before our occult vision that class of creative nature-beings which, for the occultist, are really active in everything belonging to the earth, especially in everything of the nature of metal, and which now present themselves to his imagination, to his imaginative knowledge, in sharply defined forms of the most varied kind. If, having had an occult training, and having at the same time a certain love of such things—it is especially important to have this here—a man makes acquaintance with miners and goes down into the mines, and below there, can forget all external impressions, he will then feel rising up before his imagination, the first class, as it were, of beings which create and weave behind all that is earthy, and especially in all that pertains to metals. I have not yet spoken to-day of how popular fairy tales and folk-legends have made use of all that, in a sense, is actually in existence; I should like first to give you the dry facts which offer themselves to occult vision. For according to the task set me, I must first go to work empirically—that is, I must give an account, first of all, of what we find in the various kingdoms of nature. This is how I understand the subject which was put before me.

Just as with occult vision we perceive in our imagination clearly outlined nature-beings, and in this way can have before us beings with settled form, for which we see outlines that we could sketch, so it is also possible for occult vision to have an impression of other beings standing immediately behind the veil of nature. If, let us say, on a day when the weather conditions are constantly changing, when, for instance., clouds form and rain falls, and when perhaps a mist rises from the surface of the earth; if on such a day we yield to such phenomena in the way already described, so that we allow a moral feeling to take the place of a physical one—we may again have quite a distinct experience. Especially is this the case if we devote ourselves to the peculiar play of a body of water tossing in a waterfall and giving out clouds of spray; if we yield ourselves to the forming and dissolving mist and to the watery vapor filling the air and rising like smoke, or when we see the fine rain coming down, or feel a slight drizzle in the air. If we feel all this morally there appears a second class of beings, to which we can apply the word metamorphosis, transformation. This second class of beings we cannot draw, just as little as we can really paint lightning. We can only note a shape present for a moment, and the moment after everything is again changed. Thus there appear to us as the second class of beings, those which are ever changing form, for which we can find a symbol for the imagination in the changing formations of the cloud.

But as occultists we become acquainted in yet another way with these beings. When we observe the plants as they come forth from the earth in spring-time, just when they put forth the first green shoots—not later, when they are getting ready to bear fruit—the occultist perceives that those same beings which he discovered in the pulverizing, drifting, gathering vapors, are surrounding and bathing the beings of the budding plants. So that we can say that when we see the plants springing forth from the earth, we see them everywhere bathed by such ever-changing beings as these. Then occult vision feels that that which weaves and hovers unseen over the buds of the plants is in some way concerned with what makes the plants push up out of the ground, draw forth from the ground. You see, ordinary physical science recognizes only the growth of the plants, only knows that the plants have an impelling power which forces them up from below. The occultist, however, recognizes more than this in the case of the blossom. He recognizes around the young sprouting plant, changing, transforming beings which have, as it were, been released from the surrounding space and penetrate downwards; they do not, like the physical principle of growth, merely pass from below upwards, but come from above downwards, and draw forth the plants from the ground. So, in spring, when the earth is robing herself in green, to the occultist it is as though nature-forces, descending from the universe, draw forth that which is within the earth, so that the inner part of the earth may become visible to the outer surrounding world, to the heavens. Something which is in unceasing motion hovers over the plant and what is characteristic is, that occult vision acquires a feeling that that which floats round the plants is the same as is present in the rarefied water, tossing itself into vapor and rain. That, let us say, is the second class of nature-forces and nature-beings. In the next lecture we shall pass on to the description of the third and fourth classes, which are much more interesting; and all this will become clearer. When we set about making observations such as these, which lie so far from the present consciousness of man, we must keep well in mind that “All that meets us is physical, but permeated by the spiritual.”

As we have to think of the individual man as permeated by what appears to occult sight as the etheric body, so must we think of all that is living and weaving in the world as permeated by a multiplicity of spiritual living forces and beings. The course to be followed in our considerations shall be such that we shall first describe simply the facts that an occultly-trained vision can experience in the external world; facts which are evident to us when we look into the depths of the earth or the atmosphere, into that which happens in the different realms of nature, and in the heavenly spaces filled by the fixed stars. And only at the end shall we gather the whole together in a kind of theoretical knowledge, able to enlighten us as to that which lies, as spirit, at the foundations of our physical universe and its different realms and kingdoms.

Yesterday I tried first of all to point out the way which leads the human soul to the observation of the spiritual world hidden directly behind our material physical world; and then to draw attention to two classes or categories of spiritual beings, perceptible to occult vision when the veil of the sense-world has been drawn aside.

These beings are primarily connected with the ripening of everything in the kingdoms of nature; the ripening process comes about because these forces or beings exist. They are only visible to occult vision when it concentrates on the air itself, indeed, on the purest air possible. We have described the second sort of nature-beings by saying that to perceive them we must allow falling water, or water condensed into cloud-formation or something of a like character to work upon us. Now air as free from moisture as possible, played upon by the light and warmth of the sun, must work upon the soul, if we are to visualize in our imagination these meteor-like, flashing, and disappearing beings, which live in air free from moisture, and eagerly drink in the light which permeates the air and which causes them to flash and shine. These beings then sink down into the plant-world, or the animal world, and bring about their ripening and maturity. In the very way we approach these beings we see that they stand in a certain relation to what occultism has always called the elements.

What we described in the last lecture as the first class of such beings, we find when we descend into the depths of the earth and penetrate the solid substance of our planet; our imagination is then confronted with beings of a definite form, and we may call these the nature-spirits of solid substance, or the nature-spirits of Earth. The second category which we then described are to be found in water that collects and disperses; so that we may connect these spiritual beings with what in occultism has always been called the Fluid or Watery Element. In this element they undergo metamorphosis, at the same time doing the work of drawing forth from the earth everything that grows and sprouts. The beings of whom we have just spoken, stand, on the contrary, in connection with the Element of Air, air when it is as free from moisture as possible; so that we may now speak of nature-spirits of earth, of water, and of air. There is a fourth category of such spiritual beings with which occult vision can become familiar. It must wait until a blossom has brought forth fruit and seed, and then observe how the germ gradually grows into a new plant. Only on such an occasion can this be done with ease, otherwise it is difficult to observe this fourth kind of being, for they are the protectors of all the germs, of all the seeds in our kingdoms of nature. As guardians they carry the seed from one generation of plants or other nature-beings, to the next. We can observe that these beings, which are the protectors of the seeds or germs, make it possible that the same beings continually re-appear on our earth, and that these beings are brought into contact with the warmth of our planet—with what from early times had been called the Element of Fire or Heat. That is why the forces of the seed are also connected with a certain degree of heat, a certain temperature. If occult vision observes accurately enough, it describes that the necessary transmutation of the warmth of the environment into such heat as is needed by the seed or germ in order to ripen, the changing of lifeless warmth into a living heat, is provided for by these beings. Hence they can also be called the nature-spirits of Fire, or of Heat. So that, to begin with (more details will be given in the subsequent lectures), we have become acquainted with four categories of nature-spirits, having a certain relation to what are called the elements of earth, water, air, and fire.

It is as though these spiritual beings had their jurisdiction, their territory, in these elements; just as man himself has his in the whole planet. Just as that is his home in the universe, so have these beings their territory in one or other of the elements mentioned. We have already drawn attention to the fact that for our earthly physical world, for the earth as a whole with its various kingdoms of nature, these different beings signify what the etheric body or life-body, signifies for individual man. Only we have said that in man this life-body is a unity, whereas the etheric body of the earth consists of many, many such nature-spirits, which are, moreover, divided into four classes. The living cooperation of these nature-spirits is the etheric or life-body of the earth. Thus it is no unity, but multiplicity, plurality.

If we wish with occult vision to discern this etheric body of the earth, then—as was previously described—we must allow the physical world to influence us morally, thereby drawing aside the veil of the physical world. Then the etheric body of the earth which lies directly behind this veil becomes visible. Now, how is it, when one also draws aside this further veil, described as the etheric body of the earth? We know that behind the etheric body is the astral body, as the third principle of man—that body which is the bearer of our desires, wishes and passions. Thus, if we disregard the higher principles of man's nature, we may say that we have first of all in the human being the physical body, behind this the etheric body, and behind that the astral body. It is just the same in external nature; if we draw aside the physical, we come certainly to a plurality, but this represents the etheric body of the whole earth, with all its kingdoms of nature. Now can we also speak of a sort of astral body of the earth, something which, in relation to the whole earth and to all its kingdoms, corresponds to the astral body of the human being? It is certainly not so easy to penetrate to this astral body of the earth as to the etheric body. We have seen that the etheric body can be reached if we allow the phenomena of the world to work upon us not merely through the sense impressions but morally. If we wish, however, to penetrate further, deeper occult exercises are necessary, such as you will find described in part—in so far as they can be in an open publication—in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It. At a definite point of esoteric or occult development—as you may read there—a man begins to be conscious, even at a time when he is usually unconscious, namely during the time between his falling asleep and waking.

We know that the ordinary unconscious condition, the ordinary sleep-condition of man, is caused by the fact that he leaves his physical and etheric bodies lying in the bed, and draws out the astral body and the rest of what belongs to it; but the normal man is then unconscious. When, however, he devotes himself more and more to those exercises which consist of meditation, concentration, and so on, and further strengthens the slumbering hidden forces of his soul, then he can establish a conscious condition of sleep. Thus when he has drawn his astral body out of his physical and etheric bodies, he is no longer unconscious, but has then around him—not the physical world, not even the world just described, the world of the nature-spirits—but another and still more spiritual world. When the time comes that a man, after he has freed himself from his physical and etheric bodies, feels his consciousness flash up, he then perceives quite a new order of spiritual beings. The next thing which strikes the occult vision thus far trained, is that the new spirits man now perceives have as it were command over the nature-spirits. Let us be quite clear as to how far this is the case. I have told you that those beings which we call the nature-spirits of the water, work especially in the budding and sprouting plant-world. Those which we may call the nature-spirits of the air, play their part in late summer and autumn, when the plants prepare to fade and die. Then these meteor-like air-spirits sink down over the plant-world and saturate themselves, as it were, with the plants, helping them to fade away in their spring and summer forms. The disposition that at one time the spirits of the water, and at another the spirits of the air should work in this or that region of the earth, changes according to the different regions of the earth—in the northern part of the earth it is naturally quite different from what it is in the south. The office of directing, as it were, the suitable nature-spirits to their activities at the right time, is carried out by those spiritual beings which we learn to know when the occult vision is so far trained that, when we have freed ourselves from our physical and etheric bodies, we can still be conscious of our environment. There are spiritual beings, for instance, working in connection with our earth, with our earth-planet, who allot the work of the nature-spirits to the seasons of the year, and thus bring about the alternations of the seasons for the different regions of the earth, by distributing the work of the nature-spirits. These spiritual beings represent what we may call the astral body of the earth, into which man plunges with his own astral body at night when he falls asleep. This astral body, consisting of higher spirits which hover round the earth-planet and permeate it as a spiritual atmosphere, is united with the earth; and into this spirit-atmosphere man's astral body plunges during the night-time.

Now to occult observation there is a great difference of nature-spirits, the spirits of Earth, Water, etc., and those beings which on the other hand, direct these nature-spirits. The nature-spirits are occupied in causing the beings of nature to ripen and fade, in bringing life into the whole planetary earth-sphere. It is different with those spiritual beings which in their totality can be called the astral body of the earth.

We have now, as it were drawn aside the second veil, the veil woven of the nature-spirits. We might say that when we draw aside the first veil, woven of material physical impressions, we come to the etheric body of the earth, to the nature-spirits, and we can then draw aside a second veil and come to the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, who regulate everything subject to rhythmic rotation. Now we know that in our own astral body is embedded what may be called the higher principles of man's nature, which at first we understand as the ego embedded in our astral body. We have already said that our astral body is plunged into the region of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time; that it is immersed in the surging sea, as it were, of these spirits; but as regards the normal consciousness our ego is still more asleep than the astral body. A man who is developing occultly and progressing esoterically becomes aware of this, because in the spiritual world into which he plunges and which consists of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, he first learns to penetrate into the perceptions of the astral body. In a certain respect this perception is really a dangerous reef in esoteric development, for the astral body of man is, in itself, unity; but everything in the realm of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time is, fundamentally, multiplicity, plurality. And since, in the way described, man is united with and immersed in this plurality, if he is still asleep in his ego and awake in his astral body, he feels as if he were dismembered in the world of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time. That must be avoided in a properly ordered esoteric development. Hence those who are able to give instruction for such development, see that the necessary precautions are taken that the man should not if possible allow his ego to sleep when his astral body is already awake, for he would then lose inner cohesion and would, like Dionysos, be split up into the whole astral world of the earth, consisting of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time. In a regular esoteric development precautions are taken that this should not occur. These consist in care being taken that the student, who through meditation, concentration, or other esoteric exercises is to be stimulated to clairvoyance, should retain two things in the whole sphere of clairvoyant, occult observation. In every esoteric development it is specially important that everything should be so adjusted that two things that man has in ordinary life should not be lost—which he might however very easily lose in esoteric development if not rightly guided. If rightly guided he will not lose them. First, he should not lose the recollection of any of the events of his present incarnation, as ordinarily retained in his memory. The connection with memory must not be destroyed. This connection with memory means very much more in the sphere of occultism than it does in the sphere of ordinary life. In ordinary life we only understand by memory, the power of looking back and not losing consciousness of the important events of one's life. In occultism a right memory means that a man only values with his perceptions and feelings what he has already accomplished in the past, so that he applies no other value to himself or to his deeds than the past deeds themselves entitle. Let us understand this quite correctly, for this is extremely important. If a man in the course of his occult development were suddenly driven to say to himself “I am the reincarnation of this or the other spirit,”—without there being any justification for it through any action of his—then his memory in an occult sense would be interrupted. An important principle in occult development is that of attributing no other merit to oneself, than what comes from one's actions in the physical world in the present incarnation. That is extremely important. Any other merit must only come on the basis of a higher development, which can only be attained if one first of all stands firmly on the ground that one esteems oneself for nothing but what one has accomplished in this incarnation. This is quite natural if we look at the matter objectively; for what we have accomplished in the present incarnation is also the result of earlier incarnations; it is that which Karma has, so far, made out of us. What Karma is still making of us we must first bring about; we must not add that to our value. In short, if we would set a right value on ourselves, we can only do so, at the beginning of esoteric development, if we ascribe merit only to what is inscribed in our memory as our past. That is the one element which we must preserve, if our ego is not to sleep while our astral body is awake.

We shall carry the connection with our ego into the world in which we awaken with our astral body, if we can, as it were, remain awake in our sleep, preserve our consciousness and carry it with us into the condition in which with our astral body we are freed from the physical and etheric bodies. Then, if we awake with our ego, not only do we feel our astral body to be connected with all the spiritual beings we have to-day described as the Spirits of the Rotation of Time belonging to our planet, but we feel in a quite peculiar way, that we actually no longer have a direct relation to the individual who is the bearer of the physical body and etheric body in which we usually live. We feel, so to speak, as if all the qualities of our physical and etheric bodies were taken from us. Then too we feel everything taken from us which can only live externally in any one country of our planet. For that which lives on a particular territory of our planet is connected with the Spirits of the Rotation of Time. Now, however, when we waken with our ego, we feel ourselves not only poured out into the whole world of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, but we feel ourselves one with the whole undivided spirit of the planet itself; we awaken in the undivided spirit of the planet itself. It is extremely important that we should feel ourselves as belonging to the whole of our planet. For example, when our occult vision is sufficiently awakened, and we are so far advanced that we can awaken our ego and astral body simultaneously, then our common life with the planet so expresses itself that, just as during the waking hours in the sense-world, we can follow the sun as it passes over the heavens from morning till night, so it no longer now disappears when we fall asleep. When we sleep the sun remains connected with us; it does not cease to shine but takes on a special character, so that whilst we are actually asleep during the night, we can still follow the sun. Man is of such a nature that he is connected with the changing conditions of the planet only in so far as he lives in his astral body. When however, he becomes conscious of his ego, he has nothing to do with them. He then becomes conscious of all the conditions which his planet can go through. He then pours himself into the whole substance of the planetary spirit. When I say that a man becomes one with the planetary spirit, that he lives in union with this planetary spirit, you must not suppose that this implies an advanced degree of clairvoyance; this is but a beginning. For when a man awakens in the manner described, he really only experiences the planetary spirit as a whole; whereas it consists of many, many differentiations—of wonderful, separate, spiritual beings—as we shall hear in the following lectures. The different parts of the planetary spirit, the special multiplicities of this spirit, of these he is not yet aware. What he realizes first of all, is the knowledge: “I live in the planetary spirit as though in a sea, which spiritually laves the whole earth planet and itself is the spirit of the whole earth.” One may go through immensely long development in order further and further to experience this unification with the planetary spirit; but to begin with, the experience is as has been described. Just as we say with regard to man: “behind his astral body is his ego ”—so do we say that behind all that we call the totality of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time is hidden the Spirit of the Planet itself, the Planetary Spirit. Whereas the Spirits of the Rotation of Time guide the nature-spirits of the elements in order to call forth the rhythmic change and repetitions in time—the alterations in space of the earth-planet—the Spirit of the Earth has a different task. It has the task of bringing the earth itself into mutual relation with the other heavenly bodies in the environment, to direct it and guide it, so that in the course of time it may come into the right relations to the other heavenly bodies. The Spirit of the Earth is, as it were, the great sense-apparatus of the earth, through which the earth-planet enters into the right relationship with the Cosmos. If I were to sum up the succession of those spiritual beings with whom we on our earth are first of all concerned, and to whom we can find the way through a gradual occult development, I must say:—As the first external veil we have the sense-world, with all its multiplicity, with all we see spread out before our senses and which we can understand with our human mind. Then, behind this sense-world, we have the world of nature-spirits. Behind this world of nature-spirits we have the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, and behind these the Planetary Spirit.

If we still seek a meaning as to the laws of nature in the things of the world perceptible to our senses, we should be able to interpret this meaning as the imprint of the Planetary Spirit in the sense-world. That would be the external Maya. In the first place the sense-world itself is an external Maya, for it is what the etheric body the earth, the substance of the nature-spirits, drives out of itself. A second Maya is what appears to man of the nature-spirits in the forces of nature. A third Maya is that which appears as the laws of nature, coming from the Spirits of the Rotation of Time. A fourth Maya is something which, in spite of its Maya-nature, speaks to the soul of man because, in the perception of the purpose of nature, man at any rate feels himself united with the Spirit of the whole planet, with the Spirit which leads the planet through cosmic space, and gives meaning in fact to the whole planet. In this Maya lies the direct imprint of the Planetary Spirit itself.

Thus we may say that we have to-day ascended to the undivided Spirit of the Planet. If again we wish to compare what we have now discovered for the planet, with man, we may say: “The sense-world corresponds to the physical body of man; the world of nature-spirits to the etheric body, the world of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time to the astral body, and the Planetary Spirit to the ego of man.” Just as the ego of man perceives the physical environment of earth, so does the Planetary Spirit perceive everything in the periphery, and in cosmic space as a whole outside the planet; it adjusts the acts of the planet and also the feelings of the planet, of which we shall speak tomorrow, according to these perceptions of cosmic space. For what a planet does outside in space when it passes on its way in cosmic distances, and what it effects its own body, in the elements of which it consists, that again is the result of the observations of the Planetary with regard to the external world. Just as the individual human soul lives in the world of the earth side by side with other men, and adjusts himself to them, so does the Planetary Spirit live in its planetary body, which is the ground on which we stand; but this Planetary Spirit lives in fellowship with other planetary Spirits, other Spirits of the heavenly bodies.

In the course of the two lectures already given, we have become acquainted with certain spiritual beings which occult vision can encounter when it is directed towards the spiritual life of our planet. Today it will be necessary for us to follow another path in order to ascend into the spiritual world, for we can only form a correct conception of the nature of the spiritual beings of which we have spoken, even of the Planetary Spirit itself, when we have observed them from another side. It is always extremely difficult to describe in the words of any language these spiritual beings visible to occult perception, because human languages—at least those of the present day—are only suited to the facts and phenomena of the physical plane. It is therefore only by a description from various aspects that one can hope to arrive at anything approaching what is meant when allusion is made to spiritual beings. It will be necessary for this purpose to begin to-day from the nature of man himself and to make clear certain attributes of human nature, and we can then proceed to describe the higher beings we meet with in the higher worlds. One attribute of human nature shall be brought into very special prominence to-day, and that can be described in the following way. Man is endowed with the possibility of leading an inner life which is quite independent of his external life. This possibility confronts us every hour of our waking life. We know that as regards what we see with our eyes or hear with our ears, we have something in common with all other beings which also use their senses. As man we have a common life with other men, and perhaps also with other beings. Everyone, as we know only too well, has his own special sorrows, his special joys; his troubles and cares, his hopes and ideals; in a sense these form a special kingdom not immediately visible to the physical sight of other men, and this a man carries through the world as an independent inner life. When we are in the same space as another man, we know what he sees with his eyes and hears with his ears. We may even perhaps have an idea of what takes place in his soul by what is expressed, in his face by his gestures, or his speech; but if he wishes to keep his inner life as a special world for himself alone, we can penetrate no further.

Now if we look with occult vision into the world hidden behind the first veil of the external world, we meet there with beings quite differently organized, particularly with respect to these qualities. We meet with beings not able to lead such an independent inner life as man leads. We meet as a first group with those which, when they lead an inner life, are immediately transferred through this inner life into a different state of consciousness from the one they possess in the life they lead in and with the external world. Let us try to understand this. Suppose a man so lived that should he desire to live in his inner being and not to direct his gaze to the external world, he would, simply by means of his Will, immediately have to pass over into another state of consciousness. We know that man, without his will, does pass over into a different state of consciousness in his normal life when he is asleep. We also know that sleep is the result of his astral body and his ego separating from his physical and etheric bodies. Thus we know that something has to take place in a man if he is to pass over into another form of consciousness. For instance, if a man says, “Here before me is a meadow covered with flowers; when I look at it, it gives me joy,” he does not simply on that account enter another state of consciousness; he experiences his joy in the meadow and the flowers together with his association with the outer world. Now those beings which occult vision meets with as the next category in a higher world change their state of consciousness each time they turn their perception and their action from the external world to themselves. Thus, in them there need be no separation between the different principles of their being, they simply bring about in themselves just as they are, by means of their will, another condition of consciousness. Now the perceptions of these beings, of which we are speaking as the next category above man, are not like the perceptions of man. Man perceives, because an external world appears before his senses. He surrenders himself, so to speak, to this external world. These beings do not perceive an external world in the same way as man does with his senses; they perceive it (though this is only a comparison) rather as man perceives when, for instance, he speaks, or makes a movement of the hand, or in any way externalizes his inner being in mimic art; when, in short, he gives expression to his own nature. Thus in a certain sense for these beings of a higher world of whom we are speaking, all their perceptions are at the same time a manifestation of their own being. I want you to bear in mind that when we ascend to the higher category of beings no longer perceptible to man externally, we have before us beings which perceive whenever they manifest, when they express what they themselves are; and they really perceive their own being only as long as they wish to manifest it, as long as in any way they express it outwardly. We might say they are only awake when manifesting themselves. And when of their own will they are not manifesting themselves, not entering into connection with the world around them, another condition of consciousness arises for them—in a certain sense they sleep. Only, their sleep is no unconscious sleep like that of man, it signifies for them a sort of diminution, a sort of loss of their feeling of self. They have their feeling of self so long as they manifest themselves externally, and in a certain sense they lose it when they cease to manifest. They do not sleep then as men sleep, but something arises in their own being like a manifestation of spiritual worlds higher than themselves. Their inner being is then filled by higher spiritual worlds.

Thus, mark well: When man directs his gaze outwards and observes, he lives with the outer world; he loses himself in it. In our planet, for instance, he loses himself in the various kingdoms of nature. But when he diverts his gaze from outside, he enters his own inner being and lives an independent inner life, and he is then free from this external world. When these beings of which we speak as a first category above man, are active externally, they then manifest themselves; they have their feeling of self, their actual self-expression in this manifestation; and when they enter their inner being they do not enter into an independent inner life, as does man, but a life in common with other worlds. Just as man enters such a life when he perceives the external world, so do they perceive other spiritual worlds above them when they look into themselves; they then enter this other condition of consciousness, in which they find themselves filled with other beings higher than themselves. So, as regards man we say that when he loses himself in the external world, he has his perceptions; when he withdraws from the external world, he has his independent inner life. The beings belonging to the next higher category—we call them, speaking generally, the beings of the so-called Third Hierarchy—instead of perception have manifestation, and in this manifestation or revelation they experience themselves. Instead of an inner life, they have the experience of higher spiritual worlds, that is to say, they are filled with Spirit. This is the most essential difference between man and the beings of the next higher category.

We might, by means of a crude comparison from life, define the difference between man and these beings. When a man is in a position of having inner experiences which do not coincide with what he experiences or perceives externally—in the crudest case the result is a lie. In order to make this clearer, we can express a possible peculiarity of man by saying: He is capable of perceiving something and yet of arousing contrary ideas in his inner being and even of giving vent to them externally, although they do not coincide with the perceptions. Through this peculiarity man can contradict the external world by means of an untruth. This is a possibility which—as we shall hear later in the course of these lectures—had to be given to man, in order that he might come to the truth by his own free will. When we consider man as he really is in the world we must, however, fix our attention on this quality, namely, that he can form ideas in his inner life and also externalize them, which do not coincide with his perceptions or with facts. This quality is not a possibility to the beings of the higher category spoken of here, so long as they retain their nature. The possibility of untruth does not exist in the beings of the Third Hierarchy, if they retain their nature. For what would be the result if a being of this Hierarchy wished to lie? Then, in its inner being, it must experience something which it transmitted to the external world differently from the way in which it experienced it. Then, however, the being would no longer be able to perceive this; for everything these beings experience in their inner life is revelation, and it immediately passes over into the external world. These beings must live in a kingdom of absolute truth if they wish to experience themselves at all. Suppose these beings were to lie, that is, had something in their inner being which in their revelation they would so transform that it would no longer coincide with it; they would then not be able to perceive it, for they can only perceive their inner nature. They would, under the impression of an untruth, immediately be stupefied, transferred into a state of consciousness which would be a darkening down, a lessening of their ordinary consciousness, which can only live in the revelation of their inner life. Thus we have above us a class of beings which must of their own nature live in the realm of absolute truth and sincerity. Every deviation from truth would render these beings less conscious. If they are to be observed by occult vision, the occultist must first of all find the right way in which he can meet them. I will try to describe how the occultist can find them.

The first inner experience which one who goes through an occult development must have, is the striving, in a certain sense, to subdue the inner life of ordinary normal consciousness. What we experience in our inner being we describe as our egoistic experience, as that which we wish to have from the world for ourselves alone, so to speak. The more the occultly developing student can bring himself to be passive with regard to what only concerns himself, the nearer he is to the entrance to the higher worlds. Let us take an obvious case. We all know that certain truths, certain things in the world, simply please or do not please us; that certain things affect us sympathetically, or antithetically. Such feelings with regard to the world which we only cherish for our own sake, must, by him who would develop himself occultly, be rooted out of his heart; he must, in a certain sense, be free from all that concerns only himself. This is a truth which is often emphasised, but which, in fact, is more difficult to observe than one usually thinks; for in normal consciousness man has extremely few footholds through which he can become free from himself, and overcome what concerns himself alone. Let us consider for a single moment what it actually means “to be free from oneself.” Probably to become free from what we call usually egoistic impulses is not so difficult; but we must remember that in the one incarnation in which we live, we are born at a certain time and at a certain place; that when we direct our gaze to what surrounds us, our eyes rest upon quite different things from those seen by a man, for instance, who lives in a different part of the world. There must be quite different things in his surroundings to interest him. Thus just because we are born as physically embodied human beings at a certain time and at a certain place, we are surrounded by all sorts of things which call forth our attention, our interest, which actually concern ourselves, and are different for other men. Because we, as men, are differently distributed over our planet, we are, in a certain sense, placed under the necessity of each having his separate interests, his special home upon the earth. In what we are able to learn from our direct environment we can never, therefore, in the highest sense, experience that which sets us free from our special human interests and attractions. Thus, because we are human beings in physical bodies, and in so far as we are such, we cannot possibly through our external perception, reach the portal which leads into a higher world. We must look away from all that our senses can see externally, all that our intellect can connect with the things of the external world, everything that belongs to our own special interests. But now, if we look at what we generally have in our inner being, our sorrows and joys, our worries and cares, our hopes and aims, we shall very soon become aware how dependent our inner world is on what we experience externally; and how, in a certain way, it is coloured by our experiences. Nevertheless, a certain difference exists.

We shall be willing to admit that each one of us carries his own world in his inner being. The fact that the one is born in one part of the earth at one time, and another in another at a different time does in a sense color our inner world; but we also experience something quite different besides, in regard to this inner world. It is certainly our special, in a sense, our differentiated inner world; it bears a certain coloring;—but we can also experience something quite different. If we go from the place where we are accustomed to be active through our senses, to a distant place, and there meet with a man who has had quite different experiences and perceptions from our own, we can nevertheless understand him, because he has passed through certain troubles which we similarly ourselves have passed through; because he can take pleasure, in a certain sense, in the things which please us. Many people have experienced that they may perhaps find it difficult to understand someone they encounter in a distant region or to agree with him about the external world to which they both belong, yet it may be easy to sympathize with one another concerning what the heart feels and longs for. Through our inner world, we human beings are much nearer one another than we are through the external world, and truly there would be little hope of carrying our spiritual science to the whole of humanity, were it not for the consciousness that in the inner being of every man, no matter to what part of the earth he may belong, lives something which can bring him into sympathy with us. Now, however, in order to arrive at something quite free from our own egoistic inner life, we must lay aside even that coloring of inner experience which is still influenced by the external world. That can only be when a man is able to experience something in his own inner being which does not in any way come from the external world; something which corresponds to what we may call inner suggestions, inspirations and which grows and thrives only within the soul itself. He can so transcend the special inner life that he feels something revealed in his inner being which is independent of his special egoistic existence. This is felt by men who assert again and again that over the whole earth-sphere there can be mutual understanding of certain moral ideals, or certain logical ideals which no man can doubt, and which can illuminate every man; for they are imparted to humanity, not by the external world, but by the inner world.

One province—it is, to be sure, but an arid, prosaic province—all men have in common as regards such inner manifestation. It is the province of numbers and their relation; in short, of mathematics, numbers and calculation. The fact that three times three makes nine we can never experience from the external world, it must be revealed to us through our inner being. Hence there is no possibility of disputing this in any part of the globe. Whether a thing is beautiful or ugly can be very greatly disputed all the world over; but if the fact has once been revealed to our inner being that three times three is nine, or that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts, or that a triangle has 180 degrees as the sum of its angles, we know that it is so, because no external world can reveal this, only our own inner being. In dry, prosaic mathematics begins what we may call inspiration. Only as a rule, people do not notice that inspiration begins with dry mathematics, because most people take dry mathematics for something dreadfully tedious, and are therefore not very willing to let anything be revealed to them by this means. Fundamentally, however, the same thing applies to the inner revelation of moral truths. If we have recognized something as right, we say, “This is right and the contrary is wrong, and no external power of the physical plane can make us see that what is revealed to us as right, could be wrong in our inner being.” Moral truths also reveal themselves in the highest sense, through the inner being. If a man directs his spiritual gaze to this possibility of inner manifestation, with feeling and receptivity, he can educate himself in this way. Indeed education through mere mathematics is very good. For instance, if a man constantly devotes himself to the thought: “I may have my own opinion as to whether a thing is good to eat, but someone else may be of a different opinion. That depends upon the freewill of the individual, but mathematics and moral obligations do not depend on such freewill. I know of these that they may reveal something to me which, if I refuse to accept it as true, I prove myself unworthy of humanity.” This recognition of a revelation through the inner being, if accepted as feeling, as inner impulse, is a powerful educative force in the inner life of man, if he devotes himself to it in meditation. If he first of all says to himself, “In the sense-world there is much that can only be decided by freewill; but out of the spirit, things are revealed to me as to which my freewill has nothing to say, and which yet concern me and of which I, as a man, must prove myself worthy;”—if he allows this thought to become ever stronger and stronger, so that he feels overpowered by his own inner being, he grows beyond mere egoism, and a higher self, as we say, gains the upper hand; a higher self which recognises itself as one with the Spirit of the World conquers the ordinary arbitrary self. We must develop something of this sort as a mood if we wish to succeed in reaching the portal which leads into the spiritual worlds. For if we frequently devote ourselves to such moods as have just been described, they will prove fruitful. They prove especially fruitful if we bring them as concretely as possible into our thoughts and especially if we cherish and accept the thoughts which reveal themselves to us as true, and which nevertheless are in contradiction to the external sense-world. Such thoughts may at first be nothing but pictures, but such pictures can be extremely useful for man's occult development.

I will tell you of one such picture. I will show you by such a picture how a man can raise his soul above himself.

Take two glasses, in the one is water, in the other none. The glass with water should he only half-full. Suppose you observe these two glasses in the external world. Now if you pour some of the water from the half-filled into the empty glass, the latter will be partly filled, while the other then has less water in it. If a second time you pour water from the glass which was half-filled into the glass which was at first empty, the first glass will have still less water in it; in short, through the pouring-out there is always less and less water in the glass which was at first half-full of water. That is a true presentation as regards the external physical sense-world.

Now let us form a different conception. By way of experiment, let us form the contrary idea. Imagine yourself again pouring water from the half-filled glass into the empty one. Into this latter there comes water, but you must imagine that in the half-filled glass by means of this pouring out of water there is more instead of less, and that if you poured from it a second time, so that again something passed over into the previously empty glass, There would again be more and not less water left in the glass that was at first half-filled. As the result of the out-pouring, more and more water would be in the first glass. Imagine yourself picturing this idea. Of course everyone who at our present time counts himself among the thoroughly intelligent, would say. “Why, you are picturing an absolute delusion! You imagine that you are pouring out water, and that by so doing more water comes into the glass from which you are pouring!” Of course if one applies this idea to the physical world, then, naturally, it is an absurd idea; but—marvelous to relate—it can be applied to the spiritual world. It can be applied in a singular manner. Suppose a man has a loving heart, and out of this loving heart he performs a loving action to another who needs love. He gives something to that other person; but he does not on that account become emptier when he performs loving actions to another; he receives more, he becomes fuller, he has still more, and if he performs the loving action a second time he will again receive more. One does not become poor, nor empty, by giving love or doing loving actions, on the contrary, one becomes richer, one becomes fuller. One pours forth something into the other person, something which makes one fuller oneself. Now, if we apply our picture (which is impossible, absurd, for the ordinary physical world), if we apply our picture of the two glasses to the outpouring of love, it becomes applicable; we can then grasp it as an image, as a symbol of spiritual facts. Love is so complex a thing that no man should have the arrogance to attempt to define it, to fathom the nature of love. Love is complex; we perceive it, but no definition can express it. But a symbol, a simple symbol—a glass of water which, when it is poured out becomes ever fuller—gives us one quality of the workings of love. If we thus imagine the complexity of loving actions we really do nothing else than what the mathematician does in his dry science. Nowhere is there an actual circle, nowhere an actual triangle, we must only imagine them. If we draw a circle and examine it a little through a microscope, we see nothing but chalk or small specks; it can never have the regularity of a real circle. We must turn to our imagination, our inner life, if we wish to imagine the circle or the triangle or something of that kind. Thus, to imagine something like a spiritual act—such as love, for instance—we must grasp the symbol and hold fast to an attribute. Such pictures are useful for occult development. In them we perceive that we are raised above ordinary ideas, and that if we wish to ascend to the spirit, we must form ideas just the opposite of those applicable to the sense-world. Thus we find that the forming of such symbolical conceptions is a powerful means towards ascending to the spiritual world. You find this treated fully in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It. By this means a man succeeds in recognizing something like a world above him, a world which inspires him, one which he cannot perceive in the external world, but which penetrates him. If he devotes himself more and more to these conceptions, he finally recognizes that in him, in every man, lives some spiritual being higher than he himself, the human being with his egoism in this one incarnation. When we begin to recognizes that there is something above us ordinary human beings, that there is a being guiding us, we have the first form in the ranks of the beings of the Third Hierarchy, those beings we call Angels, or Angeloi. When a man goes out beyond himself in the manner described, he first experiences the working of an Angel-Being in his own being. If we now consider this being independently, so that it has the qualities which have been described as revelation, and spiritual enfilling: if we consider this being which inspires us, as an independent being, we rise to an idea of the beings of the Third Hierarchy, standing immediately above man. We may therefore describe these beings as those which lead, guide, and direct each individual human being.

In this way I have given you a slight description of the way in which man can raise himself to begin with to the first beings above him, so that he can gain an idea of them. Just as each individual, in this way, has his guide, and when we rise above ourselves, above our egoistic interests, occult vision draws our attention to this fact: “Thou hast thy Guide—” so it is now possible to direct our vision to groups of men, to races, and peoples. Such groups of men who belong together have also a guidance, just as individual man has his, in the manner described. These beings, however, who lead whole peoples or races, are even more powerful than the leaders of individual men. In western esotericism, these leaders of peoples or races, who live in the spiritual world, who have revelation as their perception, and spiritual enfilling as their inner life, and who find expression in the actions performed by whole peoples or whole races, are called Archangels or Archangeloi. When a man progresses further in occult development, not only may the Angel who specially leads him be revealed to him, but also the Archangel who leads the common group to which he belongs. And then when our occult development goes still further, we find beings as leaders of humanity who are no longer concerned with individual races and peoples, but are leaders in successive epochs. If the occultly-developed man studies, for instance, the period in which lived the ancient Egyptian or Chaldean, he will see that the whole stamp, the whole character of the period is under a definite leadership. If he then looks with occult vision upon what follows the Egyptian-Chaldean period, and directs it to the age in which Greece and Rome gave the tone to the western intellectual world, he will see that this leadership changes and that above the individual peoples, mightier than the Archangels who are leaders of the peoples, rule Spirits who direct whole groups of peoples connected with each other at a particular time, and that these beings are then relieved after a definite time by other Time-leaders. Just as the individual realms of the Archangeloi who guide contemporary but individual groups of men, are distributed in space, so do we find, if we allow our vision to sweep over passing time, that the different epochs are guided by their definite Spirits of the Age, more powerful than the Archangels and under whom many different peoples stand at the same time. This third category of the Third Hierarchy we call the Spirits of the Age, or Archai in the terminology of western esotericism.

All the beings belonging to these three classes of the Third Hierarchy have the attributes described to-day; they all have what has here been described as manifestation or revelation and being inwardly filled with the Spirit. Occult vision becomes aware of this when it is able to raise itself to these beings. Thus, we may say that when we observe what surrounds man in the spiritual world, and is, as it were, around man as his own individual leader; when we there observe what lives spiritually and rules invisibly, instigating us to impersonal actions and impersonal thinking and feeling, when we see this, we have there first of all the beings of the Third Hierarchy. Occult vision perceives these beings. To the occultist they are realities; but normal consciousness also lives under their, sovereignty, although it does not perceive the Angel, it is under his leadership, even though unconsciously. And so do groups of men stand under their Archangel, as the age and the men of the age stand under the leadership of the Spirit of the Age.

Now these beings of the Third Hierarchy described to-day are found in our nearest spiritual environment. If, however, we went back in the evolution of our planet to a definite point of time, about which we shall learn more in the following lectures, we should find more and more that these beings, who really only live in the process of man's culture are continually bringing forth other beings from themselves. Just as a plant puts forth seed, so do the beings of the Third Hierarchy, which I have just described, bring forth other beings. There is, however, a certain difference between what the plant brings forth as seed—if we may use this comparison—and the beings which separate themselves off from the beings of the Third Hierarchy. When the plant brings forth a seed, it is, in a sense, of as much value as the complete plant; for out of it can again arise a complete plant of the same species. These beings put forth others which are separated from them just as the seed from the plant, they have offspring, so to speak, but they are, in a sense, of a lower order than themselves. They have to be of a lower order because they have other tasks which they can only accomplish if they are of a lower order. The Angels, Archangels, and Spirits of the Age in our spiritual environment, have put forth from themselves certain beings, which descend from the environment of man into the kingdoms of nature; and occult vision teaches us that the beings we learnt about yesterday as the nature-spirits, are detached from the beings of the Third Hierarchy, of whom we have learnt to know to-day. They are offspring, and to them has been allotted other service than service to mankind, namely, service to nature. Indeed, certain offspring of the Archai are the beings we have learnt to know as the nature-spirits of the earth; those separated from the Archangels and sent down into nature, are the nature-spirits of water; and those detached from the Angels we have recognized as the nature-spirits of the air. With the nature-spirits of fire or heat we have still to become acquainted. Thus we see that in a sense, through a division of the beings which represent as the Third Hierarchy our union with the world immediately above us, certain beings are sent down into the kingdoms of the elements, into air, water, earth—into the gaseous, fluid, and solid—in order there to perform service, to work within the elements, and in a sense to function as the lower offspring of the Third Hierarchy—as nature-spirits.